Transcript
ANDREW KOHUT: Our headline today isn't about technology, nor is it about how younger people aren't interested in hard news; it's about the way news audiences are increasingly becoming politicized. We see this in their cable and news preferences and we see this in the distinctions they make and the credibility judgments that they give to various news organizations.
While news habits have been relatively stable in recent years—and the reference in this survey is mostly between the survey we conducted in 2004 and the surveys we've conducted in 2002 and 2000—we do see the cable news audience continues to grow modestly. In particular, Fox News has made significant gains in audience over this period, thanks to the increasing viewership of Republicans and conservatives. Fully 52 percent of the Fox News audience, the people who say that they're regular viewers of Fox News Channel, are political conservatives. That compares to only 40 percent who said that back in the year 2000. At the same time, CNN has a more Democratic-leaning audience than in the past.
The same pattern of politicalization is found in evaluations of media credibility. Republicans have become more distrustful of virtually all news organizations over the past four years, and especially over the past two years, while Democratic evaluations of the news media have mostly been unchanged.
Half as many Republicans as Democrats give the highest believability rating to a variety of well-known news organizations, including all three broadcast networks, NPR and The NewsHour, the New York Times, and each of the major news magazines. CNN's once-dominant credibility rating have slumped in recent years, mostly among Republicans and independents, and Fox News believability ratings have remained steady, but are markedly lower among Democrats and independents. Nonetheless, more people continue to say they believe all or most of what they hear on CNN than say that about Fox News.
Besides the politicalizing trend, there are a number of other things that I want to mention to you. First, a sizable number of Americans continue to seek out in-depth news. And while TV news remains dominant, as many as 4 in 10 Americans say they get more out of the news by hearing about it or reading the news than from video. This not only affects their readership of newspapers and magazines, but, also profoundly, it affects their choices of electronic news sources.
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