2005 Annual Report - Network TV Content Analysis

To assess the thoroughness of the reporting, the study this year developed a series of new measures to break down the nature of the information viewers were getting. We measured:

• How much information audiences got about sources so they could judge the information for themselves (whether the sources were identified, the level of their knowledge, any potential biases they might have.)³

• How many sides of the story the segment told. Even if a segment cited three sources, did they share essentially similar views?
• How much opinion and speculation from journalists a segment contained.

Transparency of Sourcing

Overall, network nightly newscasts stand apart from the rest of TV news for how much they share with viewers about the sources they rely on. Half the stories on the three network evening newscasts (50%) had at least two fully transparent sources. And that number shot up to 81% for the stories that make up most of the broadcast time, correspondent packages. (The difference is the brief anchor-read items, which take up a small amount of time but account for a large number of stories.)

Source Transparency, Network Evening News

The NewsHour on PBS also distinguished itself for the transparency of its stories. It has three distinct formats - interviews, packages, and anchor-only items - and the level of sourcing is heavily influenced by the format. Even so, the NewsHour stands out. Its taped packages were the best sourced of all (79%), though they were a smaller part of the program than on the commercial networks. Furthermore, almost a quarter of the NewsHour's stories (23%) had the highest level of transparency, four or more fully identified sources.

The morning shows on network news relied on fewer sources in their stories and shared less information about them with viewers. Just 39% of morning stories contained two or more fully identified sources and only 11% carried four or more. That is a function both of format, with fewer taped packages, and the kind of interviews the morning shows carry. The interviews are often one-on-one and focus on the interviewee's personal life or experiences. Interviews on evening news programs tend to discuss issues that draw on outside information.

Still, all the broadcast news programs were well ahead of cable when it came to sharing information about sources. Television in general shared less source information than newspapers and online news, which have larger news holes.⁴

Television news also carries with it a natural added element of transparency - the visual image. An on-camera source offers the viewer additional audiovisual cues such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and even some sociological context. Such things may provide additional value, but they don't always help make clear the sources' connection to the story or the quality of their expertise.

Breadth of Viewpoints

How many different aspects of the story did network newscasts tell? Here all three types of network newscasts fared well, and far better than cable. (Some stories, of course, simply present undisputed facts, such as describing an accident, and there isn't necessarily a second side to the story. Those were excluded from the search for multiple viewpoints.)

Fully 87% of controversial stories reported on the NewsHour contained more than one side of the story. Morning news scored similarly; 86% of its stories told at least two sides of controversial stories. The nightly newscasts lagged behind. Only 72% of stories contained more than one side, meaning that 28% of stories that were in dispute carried, at best, only a passing reference to another side of the story.⁵

The morning-to-evening difference was even wider among packaged pieces. Nearly all, 98%, of morning packages with some inherent controversy had multiple viewpoints, compared to only 75% in the evenings. And the contrast was not due to the difference in overall available time (morning shows are two or three hours long, depending on the network). Evening news packages on average were five seconds longer than morning packages (146 seconds versus 141).⁶

One factor is story topic. About 25% of the morning packages with multiple viewpoints were about crime, accidents, celebrity, lifestyle and miscellaneous topics, compared to only 12% in the evening packages. As we've mentioned, the morning shows are fond of water-cooler controversy involving less than major news - Laci Peterson, or Michael Jackson.

In any case, all the viewpoints numbers stand out from cable news, where close to three-quarters (73%) of controversial stories told just one side or had only a passing reference to another point of view.