2005 Annual Report - Newspaper Content Analysis

Finally, the study this year also examined the degree to which stories included outright opinion from the journalist. A growing question in journalism concerns the level of subjectivity that now exists, the sense that the line between news and opinion has blurred. In this report, as in past studies, we have made a distinction between coverage in which a journalist's interpretation can be attributed to reporting he or she has done, and interpretation or opinion that cannot. The latter category forces the audience to assume that the interpretation is the journalist's alone.

What percentage of newspaper stories contained journalistic opinion that was not explicitly attributed to any sourcing or reporting?

In all, 85% of newspaper stories contained no such journalistic opinion. Among news stories, with columns removed, the number rises to 92%. (Even 17% of the columns attributed whatever opinions were expressed to cited reporting).

Are some sections more likely to contain opinion than others? The answers are what one would expect. Sports section fronts are more likely to contain journalists' opinions. Part of this is due to personal columns, but even if columns are removed, these pages are still more speculative.

The front pages are less likely to contain opinion, but the more interesting finding is the differences here among papers of different sizes. Fully 13% of the A1 stories in the biggest papers contained journalistic opinion, compared with just 3% in papers in both the middle-sized and the smallest papers.

In the other measurements of depth, remember, large papers stood out as being on the top of the group - offering a greater range of viewpoints, a greater number of stakeholders. This finding suggest that perhaps along with deeper reporting comes the belief that the reporter's views are worth adding to the mix.

Some might suspect another possible explanation to be the smaller papers' greater reliance on wire copy. And in fact, stories from the wires were less likely over all than staff-written stories to contain opinion from journalists - 9% of wire stories, 16% of staff-written. But that was due to largely opinionated columns which were usually staff-written. Large papers carried almost no straight wire copy on their section fronts (less than 1%), versus nearly a third (32%) of reportage at the smallest papers and 15% at mid-sized papers.

But if we remove all wire copy and look only at staff-written pieces, the smallest papers still stand out as the least likely to contain opinions from the journalists (7% versus 21% at the largest papers and 17% at mid-sized).

Journalists's Opinion on the Front Page, by Circulation Size