The best evidence suggests there is something of a U-curve to the nightly news agenda over the last 20 years. Looking at studies from different researchers, there was a steady move after the Cold War toward subjects like entertainment, lifestyle and celebrity crimes, and away from subjects such as international events and public policy debates. That move toward a lighter agenda began to ease in the late 1990s and the news agenda has become even more serious again after September 11.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) has tracked the news agenda -- the topics of stories -- on network nightly news off and on for 26 years. The Tyndall Report, using slightly different methodology, has tracked time devoted to different topics on network news every weeknight for 16 years. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, whose president is Robert Lichter, has published tracking of topics by story on network news every night (weekday and weekend) going back to 1990 using a methodology similar to that of the PEJ. All three approaches concur in revealing this gradual shifting of the news agenda on nightly news.2 [1]
The methodology of the Tyndall Report, whose publisher is Andrew Tyndall, counts specific story themes but not broader topic categories. The report shows that coverage of U.S. foreign policy has returned to levels found at the end of the Cold War, although coverage of international affairs not related to the U.S. has not. But Tyndall also notes that the war in Iraq is a singular event that makes projections into the future uncertain. The PEJ's more episodic measurements of the full topic agenda of nightly newscasts, reinforces Tyndall's findings about international coverage. It also finds, though, that the agenda is still less oriented to government and public policy than in the 1970's and 80's. Government coverage had declined to just 5% in 2001 and 2002, down from 32% in 1987. In the 2003 study, government topics climbed back to 16% of all stories, though still just half of where it was in 1987.
If coverage of foreign affairs and government were up, what was down? Generally crime and more lifestyle and entertainment-oriented news topics. Stories were half as likely to be about crime in 2003 than they were in 2002 (6 percent in 2003 versus 12 percent in 2002.) Entertainment and lifestyle coverage dropped to just 8 percent of stories; these topics had come to make up nearly 20 percent of stories studied in 2001. They declined after September 11 and rose back to 19 percent of stories in the first six months of 2002.
Science coverage appears to have declined somewhat over the last two years (to 2 percent of stories).
Almost certainly one reason for the more traditional agenda on nightly news is the foreign policy of the current administration. Given the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the networks have had little choice but to have government, military or foreign policy dominate their story selection, irrespective of cost.
Yet one interesting thing about the 2003 war in Iraq and the Gulf War 12 years ago, Tyndall says, is that the usual patterns of overseas coverage were not followed. Increased U.S. foreign policy coverage normally has the effect of increased international coverage unrelated to U.S. foreign policy as reporters try to put U.S. actions in a global context. That tended to happen during the Cold War, when coverage of the internal affairs of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe increased. It also happened immediately after the September 11 attacks, but it did not continue in 2003.
Tyndall also suggests words like hard and soft news may be misleading in describing the shift. In the 1970s, he reminds us, Walter Cronkite, who was then the CBS anchor, would often close with a four-or-five-minute human-interest piece by Charles Kuralt "On the Road." Tyndall suggests that in the 1990s the networks added an array of family and lifestyle topics, covering such things as childrearing, sexuality, reproduction, tobacco, nutrition, obesity, eldercare and early education. He says that demographic calculations to target more women go into the decisions to cover these topics. But he suggests that it is unfair to consider these necessarily less serious issues.
While the domestic agenda has broadened and become a larger part of network news over the years, some topics are notably absent in the composite month of newscasts studied in 2003. The environment, for instance, made up just 1 percent of the stories on nightly news. The same was true of education, transportation and religion. Technology made up even less. Coverage of the healthcare system in the country made up 3 percent of the stories. By contrast, accidents and disasters (excluding weather) made up 6 percent of the stories on the nightly news.
Percent of All Stories
| 1977 | 1987 | 1997 | June 2001 | Oct. 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | |
| Government | 37% | 32% | 18% | 5% | 7% | 5% | 16% |
| Foreign/Military | 21 | 19 | 15 | 17 | 10 | 21 | 25 |
| Defense | 1 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 29 | 16 | 3 |
| Domestic | 8 | 7 | 5 | 18 | 34 | 12 | 16 |
| Crime | 8 | 7 | 13 | 12 | 4 | 12 | 6 |
| Business | 6 | 11 | 7 | 14 | 5 | 11 | 12 |
| Celebrity/Enter. | 2 | 3 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Lifestyle | 4 | 11 | 14 | 13 | 1 | 17 | 6 |
| Science | 4 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 11 | 2 | 2 |
| Accidents/Disasters | 9 | 5 | 10 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 10 |
| Other | N.A. | N.A. | N.A. | 3 | 0 | N.A. | 2 |
*Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
Looked at another way, if you watched a commercial nightly newscast every weeknight for a month - some 10 hours of programming - you would have seen:3 [2]
Less than a minute about culture and the arts
Less than a minute on family and parenting
About four minutes on the environment
Less than five minutes about transportation
Slightly less than seven minutes about education
About 14 minutes on healthcare
About 16 minutes of crime
About 22 minutes on accidents and disasters
About 74 minutes on government matters
About 97 minutes on foreign affairs
How does this news agenda compare to Page A-1 of America's newspapers?
The three network nightly newscasts remain the closest thing one can find to it on commercial television. While newspaper front pages are slightly more oriented to government and slightly less oriented to foreign affairs and the war, in the main they are quite similar. Neither focused heavily on crime, and both avoided celebrity and lifestyle coverage.
Percent of All Stories
| Newspapers (Page A1 only) |
Commercial Nightly News | PBS "NewsHour" | |
| Government | 16% | 26% | 24% |
| Foreign/Military | 25 | 18 | 39 |
| Defense | 3 | 3 | * |
| Domestic | 16 | 22 | 11 |
| Crime | 6 | 7 | 2 |
| Business | 12 | 6 | 11 |
| Celebrity/Enter. | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Lifestyle | 6 | 8 | 3 |
| Science | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Accidents/Disasters | 10 | 4 | 4 |
| Other | 2 | 2 | 2 |
*Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
The commercial nightly news was more likely to focus on always-graphic disasters (10 percent versus 4 percent of newspaper front pages). They were also twice as likely to carry business stories, though a portion of that is the nightly recitation of the advance or decline of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and newspapers normally have a separate section devoted exclusively to business.
The "NewsHour" on the noncommercial PBS is closer to newspaper front pages in its orientation toward government. And, it focused more on foreign affairs than either newspaper front pages or commercial nightly news. Fully 63 percent of "NewsHour" stories studied were government and foreign affairs. The program, in turn, carried less other kinds of domestic news, including crime.