Have public attitudes toward the network news divisions changed in the last year?

By one measure, 2004 suggested the public may be questioning the authority it once found in network news. On Election Night 2004, the three commercial broadcast networks each lost millions of viewers compared to the number that tuned in four years earlier. The Fox broadcasting network and CNN each posted modest gains, while Fox News on cable tripled its viewership to top 8 million.

Did Election Night 2004 signal a further shift in public respect for the networks?

The first place to start looking might be in one of the most basic measures of attitudes, whether people believe most of what a news organization tells them.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has been asking the public about the "believability" of different news organizations for the past 19 years. And in that time, there has been a marked decline in the believability of network news. The number of people giving ABC, CBS or NBC news the highest mark for believability fell from roughly 32% in 1985 to 25% in 2002.

In 2004, the number fell again, to 22%.¹ [1]

Television News Believability

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "Pew Research Center Biennial News Consumption Survey," June 8, 2004

Believability of Network News Outlets

Believe all or most of what organization says

Design Your Own Chart [2]

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, ’’Pew Research Biennial News Consumption Survey,’’ June 8, 2004

Data does not exist for Fox News or MSNBC before 2000. Percentages based on those who could rate each.

That sense of declining trust now seems to apply to cable news as well. Two of the three cable networks saw their believability scores fall slightly. Only Fox News Channel saw an increase. One broadcast network, CBS, also saw a slight drop, from 26% to 24%.² [3]

Interestingly, there are no meaningful differences between the believability of any of the networks, including the cable channels. The lone exception is CNN, which is perceived as somewhat more believable than most (about 8 percentage points higher), though it is now falling.

According to survey data gathered by the Pew Research Center, as "a consequence of…increasing partisanship, the most trusted news sources for Democrats, Republicans and Independents vary widely."³ [4] Indeed, people from each of those political affiliations ranked only three news organs - CNN, 60 Minutes and C-Span - as most believable.

But when the Project delved further into the Pew Research Center's data on news consumption, we found that while partisan divisions exist between what outlets people find credible, similar divides to not exist with regard to news consumption. Republicans who respond that they distrust a news organization will actually watch it in the same proportions as those who trust it. The same is true for Democrats and Independents.

In other words, the idea that there are "Red" and "Blue" news media has been overstated. There is an exception to this, and that is the cable networks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, viewership of the Fox News Channel tends to be more heavily Republican.

Believability of Select News Sources*

Source:Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, ’’Pew Research Biennial News Consumption Survey,’’ June 8, 2004
* Percent are those from each group who believe all or most of what the organization reports, based on those able to rate the organization

In addition to asking people to rate the "believability" of various new outlets, the Pew survey separately asks people whether they "trust what news organizations are saying." Here, too, trust and use do not correlate. Republicans who distrust the news media are as likely - and often more likely - to be viewers of network news as those who are more trusting, a phenomenon that is also true of Democrats, Independents, conservatives, liberals and moderates.

There is another wrinkle to the partisanship question. People of all ideological stripes, according to Pew data, tend to see more bias in the press than they used to - a point worth noting given the long history of questions about the networks. Conservatives see a liberal bias. Liberals see the news media as establishment or conservative.

Bias in Campaign Coverage

1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004

Design Your Own Chart [5]

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

It would seem that the believability of a media organization connects to larger feelings about media in general, rather than specific things that a news organization does or doesn't do. That may be because it is difficult for people answering a survey to recall specific incidents or facts that might influence their responses.

The big media imbroglio of 2004, the so-called "Memogate" incident at CBS News, deserves a closer look, then, in the context of examining public feelings toward network news.