2005 Annual Report - Cable TV Content Analysis

Live Reporting Lives On

The second major feature of cable news is that it is dominated by the culture of live, extemporaneous journalism.

Over the three programs studied for twenty days, 52% of time was spent in live interviews (usually by anchors) or reporters in live standups.

The medium, as noted last year, "has all but abandoned what was once the primary element of television news, the written and edited story."

Less than half as much time, 24%, on the cable programs studied is made up of correspondent packages. Compare that to network nightly newscasts, in which 86% of time is such packages, or even morning news or PBS, where a third of time is correspondents telling stories.

Another 17% of time is devoted to anchors reading the teleprompter, so-called tell stories, either with video or without. And, in a feature that is not usually found on other TV programming, 6% of the time covered live events such as press conferences. (1% was spent on banter between stories.)

Story Origination on Cable News

Percent of all time

The figures for those three programs studied in depth, moreover, closely mirror what viewers would see on the cable networks generally. In the course of a sixteen-hour day, 46% of the time on cable is spent in what its producers can describe as live -- either live interviews, usually by anchors, or reporters talking live to the camera. Another 5% is live events such as press conferences aired as they happen (usually without a reporter on camera in any form).

Only 26% of the entire cable day comprises correspondent packages. Anchors reading the teleprompter, so-called tell stories or headline news, with or without video, account for another 20%.

Promotions and small talk between staff members take up the remaining 5% of the day, or 48 minutes of air time.

The approach has all the virtues of capturing events as they are happening. It is also cheaper, and helps create the impression that things are up to date.

But the amount of updating, as we noted, is minimal, and the emphasis on live cable news has resulted in walking away from the capacity to review, verify, edit, choose words carefully and match those words to pictures.

Audiences are even less likely to find verified, edited journalism at certain times of the day. Those watching talk shows such as Larry King or Bill O'Reilly will see barely any taped packages. Those watching the closest thing that cable has to a signature evening newscast (Brit Hume on Fox, Aaron Brown on CNN or Keith Olberman on MSNBC) are more likely to see taped packages (42% of all time). Still, that is only half as likely as on the broadcast evening news on ABC, CBS or NBC, where 86% of all time is edited packages.

Thinner Reporting on Cable

In part because of the dependence on being live -- and the illusion that creates of being new -- cable news is also more thinly reported than most other kinds of national TV news.

Over all, cable news stories have fewer sources than those on broadcast, reveal less about those sources, and, if the story involves a dispute, contain fewer conflicting points of view than in broadcast TV.

To pin this down, the study went deeper this year than last in examining the depth or thoroughness of reporting. This analysis was done in the three key parts of the day studied for 20 days -- daytime, prime-time talk and the key evening newscast -- to get a range of different styles of programming, and to match the same days studied in other media. Specifically, we studied:

• How many sources stories contained and how much the stories shared with the audience about those sources.

• The degree to which stories that involved controversy reflected more than one side of the story.

• Whether stories contained the journalists' own opinions, unattributed to any sourcing or reporting.

Depth of Sourcing

In general, cable news was less likely than other media to contain multiple sources with enough description attached -- their identity, their level of knowledge about the events being described and any potential biases -- to enable audiences to judge what they were saying.

Only a quarter of cable stories studied (26%) contained even two or more such sources. That compares with 50% of network evening news stories, 81% of stories on newspaper front pages and 78% of online news stories. Even network morning shows, with their penchant for long one-person interviews, tended to have significantly more stories, 39%, with at least two fully transparent sources.²

Most cable stories (74%) had no source that audiences could fully identify, or only one.

The dependence on live programming is one reason cable reporting is thinner and at the same time less transparent. The live reporting on cable is even more thinly sourced than cable news as a whole. Most of the live reports, 60%, were based on only a single source that audiences could fully identify. The taped edited packages on cable were four times as likely to contain four or more fully identified sources as the live reports, and nearly twice as likely to contain two or three (see chart). But even the taped, edited packages on cable contained fewer fully transparent sources than packages on commercial broadcast newscasts or on PBS, despite cable's advantage of having more time for the news.

Source Transparency on Cable, by Story Type

Percent of all stories

Breadth of Viewpoints

The reporting on cable news is also more one-sided than that in other media studied.

Over all, only a quarter of cable stories that involved controversy contained anything more than a passing reference to a second point of view. That was much less balanced than all the over-the-air broadcast news programs studied. Indeed, stories on morning news, PBS evening news and those on newspaper front pages were more than three times as likely to contain a mix of views, and commercial evening newscasts just under that.

Range of Viewpoints on Cable and Network News

Percent of all stories

Certain kinds of storytelling on cable tended to be more balanced than others, and again live reporting was at the bottom of that scale. More than three-quarters of interviews and reporter standups (78%) told only one side, or mostly one side, of controversial stories. That meant only 22% of live reported stories offered a balance of at least two viewpoints.

Taped packages on cable fared better, but not dramatically. Just over a third of the taped packages studied (38%) offered at least two points of view, which still meant that 62% were mostly one-sided. Indeed, the taped edited packages on cable do not stack up against those on network news in this regard. On the Big Three commercial nightly newscasts, 75% of the taped packages contained multiple viewpoints. So the style of storytelling does not entirely explain the one-sidedness of cable.

Range of Viewpoints on Cable News, by Story Type

Percent of all stories

Live reports also differ from taped packages in ways some people might argue are advantages. For instance, while reporter standups and live interviews tended not to cite multiple sources, they also tended to avoid citing anonymous sources, perhaps because they often had just one source in all -- the interviewee. Just 5% of live reports on cable contained anonymous sourcing, compared with 20% of packaged pieces.³

Interestingly, correspondents and anchors on live and unscripted stories also seem less likely to inject their own opinions in their reports. Just over a third of live cable reports, 34%, contained journalist opinion, versus 43% of packaged pieces.

One possible explanation is that reporters and anchors who are live may adopt a stenographic frame of mind, trying to simply recall and recite what they have been told. That would help explain both their tendency toward one-sidedness and their avoidance of giving opinions.

Journalist Opinion on Cable News, Select Story Types

Percent of all stories

One area where there is little difference between live and packaged is how correspondents frame their reporting. Packages tend to be a little more conflict-oriented while live reports do a little more reality check pieces (i.e. is this really true? What does this really mean?) and telling of a good tale. Generally, though, correspondents gravitate to the same kinds of frames.

Story Frames on Cable, Select Story Types

Percent of all stories

Are interview-based programs necessarily less able to offer a broad range of views and deep sourcing? Perhaps not. One interview-based program that seems to do a good job of this in the PBS NewsHour, which often combines packages and live discussion (see Network TV Content Analysis).