Interesting (and troubling) statistics on the quality and consumption of American journalism, from Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:
Circulation of English-language daily newspapers has dropped 11% since 1990; network news ratings are down 34% since 1994; late-night local television news viewership has fallen by 16% since 1997; and the number of viewers watching cable news has been flat since late 2001.
. . .
The report catalogued a striking decline in the number of journalists employed in American newsrooms.
There are one-third fewer network correspondents than in 1985; 2,200 fewer people at newspapers than in 1990; and the number of full-time radio newsroom employees fell by 44% from 1994 to 2001.
Only 5% of stories on cable news contain new information, the report found. Most were simply rehashes of the same facts. There was also less fact checking than in the past and less policing of journalistic standards.
Quality news and information were more available than ever before, but so was the trivial, the one-sided and the false.
Yep. That pretty well describes what I see every day, especially on TV. If you sift out the entertainment, celebrity justice, lifestyle/health, and daily he said/she said political pieces (with no fact checking), there’s not much “news” left in the broadcasts.
Greetings,
I tend to agree. But as I can only use myself as a measure, I have to say I get about 99.9% of my news from the internet today. My sources are the electronic versions of “traditional” sources, ABC, CBS, CNN, NYT, WP, LAT, etc.
I still hold that accuracy in reporting is based on capitalism, i.e. conservatives use conservative sources and liberals use liberal sources. The competition amoung all them is based in accuracy and interest to core constituents.
–jeff-perado
News you can use
I share Brian’s sentiment that maybe if news folks covered, you know, news instead of all the other assorted crap, their audience wouldn’t be in…