The Research Report
-
October 23, 2008 09:00 AM
Too Good to Be True?
Do local TV news viewers prefer Jim Lehrer to Kent Brockman?
Journalists, and for that matter academics, relish a good plot twist. So it’s no surprise that some commentators in the United States have latched onto a new picture of Arab journalists as friends, not foes, of western interests. Rather than being hard-core enemies of America, Arab media are “potential allies whose agenda broadly tracks the stated goals of the United...
Continue reading -
August 21, 2008 09:00 AM
Too Good to Be True?
New research about what viewers want from television news
The decade-long collaboration between the Project for Excellence in Journalism and several academics led by Wellesley College political scientist Marion Just concludes that the more local TV invests in quality reporting, the bigger its audience tends to be. Crime news and celebrity news, contrary to all popular and professional wisdom, they say, aren’t as appealing to TV viewers.
... Continue reading -
May 02, 2008 09:00 AM
Getting Bit
When sound bites get snack-sized
Anyone who buys the beltway complaint that television news reporting shrivels both politics and public discourse has two new reasons to worry: sound bites are getting shorter and video reels are getting longer. That means less talk of policy solutions and more rolling shots of diplomatic handshakes, tarmac striding, and presidential cowboys whacking underbrush on Texas ranches. In the Journal...
Continue reading -
April 24, 2008 02:00 PM
One of the Guys
It's still rare for a reporter to be both fierce and female
Veteran Washington post media critic Howard Kurtz is known for hurling slings and arrows at members of his own profession. So his recent ode to ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz was unusual—up to a point. For all his praise of Raddatz for “putting herself in the thick of things,” Kurtz apparently could not sidestep the old gender trap. He finds...
Continue reading -
February 07, 2008 09:00 AM
Leaps and Bounds
Paranoia: as American as your (possibly poisoned) apple pie
Perhaps not since colonial Salem have fears of conspiracy been so pervasive. And though old women are no longer persecuted for dancing with the devil (we’re fairly sure), a new study shows that paranoid tendencies in American thinking are still strong. Only instead of wayward outsiders, would-be conspirators are seen at the heart of the establishment, engaged in covert...
Continue reading -
December 28, 2007 09:00 AM
Who Hates the Press?
From Watergate to the present, confidence in the media has been spiraling down
A new study traces more than thirty years of changing public attitudes toward the news media, and unhappily finds that to know journalism is to disdain it. Timothy E. Cook and Paul Gronke, in the July edition of Political Communication, find that “for the heaviest consumers of the news (the more educated, the better-off, older respondents),…familiarity with the news...
Continue reading -
October 04, 2007 09:00 AM
What Journalism Can't Do
In covering catastrophe, how can journalism make a difference?
Suppose you volunteer to participate in a psychological experiment. You answer a set of questions and receive a small cash payment in return. As you are leaving the lab, you are handed an envelope from Save the Children and a photo of a starving seven-year-old girl, Rokia, and asked if you would like to donate some or all of...
Continue reading -
August 07, 2007 08:30 AM
The Good-Citizen Quiz
What Americans know
At least three misjudgments are common around American Independence Day: thinking one’s feet are faster than the fuse on a bottle rocket, believing there’s always room for one more “freedom dog,” and hailing the colonial past as a civic golden age. We conjure images of illustrious ancestors holding forth in packed town halls, declaring independence, and debating the Constitution. Citizens...
Continue reading -
June 26, 2007 08:30 PM
When Does the White House Watchdog Bark?
More often than you think
The veteran UPI correspondent Helen Thomas, recently dislodged from the front row of the remodeled press briefing room, has seen a lot in her forty-six years covering the White House. The octogenarian’s tenure has spanned nine presidents and two generations of journalists. But in some recent books, the famously combative Thomas claims that her colleagues’ willingness to ask tough...
Continue reading -
March 01, 2007 08:30 AM
A Long View of Layoffs
A reason to worry less about the future of the newspaper industry
The present wave of cost- cutting, job-eliminating, and bureau-closing is just one reason journalism is widely believed to be an industry in crisis. But a pair of university studies concerning the profession’s past and future may slightly temper fears of its imminent demise.
At a glance, the news is indeed bad. A systematic, national survey of journalists, conducted...
Continue reading -
January 01, 2007 08:30 AM
The Limits of Live
The Research Report
Two recent studies, one American and one British, indict TV news for its growing emphasis on live, unscripted reporting. Fast-breaking, popular, with a contemporary air of informality, such reporting is also measurably thinner, more opinionated, and less densely sourced than other news forms. Typically consisting of anchors (or “presenters” in British parlance) interviewing or chatting with reporters in the...
Continue reading -
November 01, 2006 08:30 AM
Inside Jokes
A new take on news and late-night comedy, and a parsing of journalistic courage
AAfter White House-bound Bill Clinton donned shades and played the sax on The Arsenio Hall Show in June 1992, a small intellectual industry emerged to examine the relationship between entertainment and politics. Media watchdogs began counting jokes on Leno and Letterman to make sure Republicans and Democrats were evenly roasted, while campaign managers hurried to book their candidates for...
Continue reading
—advertisement—
Desks
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Talking Shop: Gail Collins The New York Times columnist on caucuses, campaigning, and the glory of deadlines
- Baucus Watch, Part III Montana reporter digs deep into the senator’s white paper
The Audit Business
- WSJ Watchdogs Sketchy Conseco Insurance Move
- Ebony on the Fall of Detroit The magazine reports the U.S. car industry’s demise is hitting blacks especially hard