2005 Annual Report - Network TV Content Analysis

The third step in looking at reporting was to measure the extent to which stories contained opinion from the journalists themselves in ways that they do not attribute to any source or other reporting.

For the most part, journalists on the network evening news kept themselves out of their reporting. The vast majority stories (83%) did not contain any direct opinion from journalists.

Morning news, despite its heavy emphasis on interviewing, contained even less journalistic opinion (just 11% of stories).

Yet here PBS's NewsHour again stood out from the rest. Only 3% of segments contained explicit journalistic opinion. That was half that even of front-page newspaper coverage over all (6%), and only about a fourth the coverage on front pages of the largest papers (13%).

In cable, we looked at three different hour-long programs on each network (a mid-day hour, the news roundup show and the highest rated prime-time talk show.) Both over all and looking just at their news digest programs, opinion from correspondents and anchors was more prevalent - 28% of all stories 26% of those on news digest shows.

Some topics on television either lend themselves to reporters' offering their own assessments or are considered fairer game for journalists to weigh in - particularly politics. On the nightly commercial newscasts, for instance, 44% of all election stories carried some opinions from journalists themselves. That is markedly higher than for foreign affairs, domestic affairs and government stories (which ranged from 10% to 12%). In sharp contrast, PBS carried only two election stories with journalists' opinions.

The spread of opinion was quite similar on the network morning news shows. Election stories were most likely to carry journalist opinion (20%); the figure was between 9% and 13% for stories about foreign affairs, domestic affairs and government.

Much of the journalistic opining appeared to be of the horse-race variety, particularly during the Democratic primary season. (see the Election section below). Still, with questions about partisanship on the rise (see Public Attitudes), the apparently looser standards about separating news and opinion in political coverage may carry even greater importance.

Journalist Speculation in News Topics

Network Evening News (Commercial and PBS)