|
 <
Previous | Next >
| Home
Introduction
| Commentary | Survey
Findings | Methodology
| Questionnaire
Commentary on the Survey Findings
By Bill Kovach, Tom Rosenstiel and Amy
Mitchell
Introduction
What Journalists Are Worried About
A Newsroom-Executive Divide
Specific Areas of Concern
The Internet as a Place of Confidence and Cuts
Confidence in the Public
Politics & Ideology
Crossing from Concern to Frustration
Introduction
While their worries are changing, the problems that journalists
see with their profession in many ways seem more intractable
than they did a few years ago.
News people feel better about some elements of their work.
But they fear more than ever that the economic behavior of
their companies is eroding the quality of journalism.
In particular, they think business pressures are making the
news they produce thinner and shallower. And they report more
cases of advertisers and owners breaching the independence
of the newsroom.
These worries, in turn, seem to have widened the divide between
the people who cover the news and the business executives
they work for.
The changes in attitude have come after a period in which
news companies, faced with declining audiences and pressure
on revenues, have in many cases made further cuts in newsgathering
resources.
There are also alarming signs that the news industry is continuing
the short-term mentality that some critics contend has undermined
journalism in the past. Online news is one of the few areas
seeing general audience growth today, yet online journalists
more often than any others report their newsrooms have suffered
staff cuts.
Only five years earlier, news people were much more likely
to see failures of their own making as more of an issue. Since
then, they have come to feel more in touch with audiences,
less cynical and more embracing of new technology. In other
words, journalists feel they have made progress on the areas
that they can control in the newsroom.
While feeling closer to audiences, however, news people also
have less confidence in the American public to make wise electoral
decisions, a finding that raises questions about the kind
of journalism they may produce in the future.
There are also signs that the people who staff newsrooms,
at least at the national level, tend to describe themselves
as more liberal than in the past.
These findings, which build on work by the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press and the Committee of Concerned
Journalists five years ago, mark the beginning of an annual
collaboration between the Pew Center and the Project for Excellence
in Journalism to monitor the feelings of journalists.
In addition to assessing the change from 1999, this survey
puts down some new baselines for further study-matters such
as whether the press is too timid, the impact of cable, the
Internet and political ideology.
[top]
What Journalists Are Worried About
News people are not confident about the future of journalism.
Overall, they appear split over whether journalism is headed
in the right or wrong direction. At the national level a slim
majority are pessimistic. At the local level a slim majority
are optimistic. Broadcasters are more pessimistic. Print people
are more optimistic. Internet journalists are the most optimistic
of all.
Yet eliminate certain job descriptions and things look bleaker.
Nationally, remove business executives and a majority of journalists
think things are moving in the wrong direction. At the local
level, it is only senior news managers who are confident.
Business executives are split.
More important, the source of their concern is different
than five years ago. Increasingly, journalists worry that
the economics of journalism are eroding quality.
Sizable majorities of journalists (66% nationally and 57%
locally) think "increased bottom line pressure is seriously
hurting the quality of news coverage." That is a dramatic
increase from five years ago, when fewer than half in the
news business felt this way.
And their concerns may be justified. The State of the News
Media 2004 report produced by the Project for Excellence in
Journalism in March found that most sectors of the news media
have seen clear cutbacks in newsgathering resources. The number
of newspaper newsroom staffers shrunk by 2,000 between 2000
and 2004, a drop of 4% overall. Some major online news sites
saw much deeper cuts, such as MSNBC, which cut around a quarter
of its staff between 2001 and 2003. Radio newsroom staffing
declined by 57% from 1994 to 2001. After an uptick in 1999,
network staffing began to drop again in 2000. Since 1985 the
number of network news correspondents has declined by 35 percent
while the number of stories per reporter increased by 30 percent.
Nationally, quality is still the problem news people worry
about most but they are worried about it less than five years
ago. Locally, as many journalists now cite economic pressure
as journalism's biggest problem as point to a lack of quality.
And those who have felt the economic pressure more acutely
are the most worried of all. Among those who reported staff
cuts in the last three years, three-quarters feel increased
bottom line pressure is "seriously hurting" news
quality. They also were more likely than average to name economic
and business pressures as journalism's biggest problem.
There are also signs that the economic influences on the
news business have become more pernicious. Five years ago
we found that financial pressure in the newsroom was "not
a matter of executives or advertisers pressuring journalists
about what to write or broadcast." It was more subtle
than that.
Unfortunately, that is less true today. Now a third of local
journalists say they have felt such pressure, most notably
from either advertisers or from corporate owners. In other
words, one of the most dearly held principles of journalism-the
independence of the newsroom about editorial decision-making-increasingly
is being breached.
There is also alarming news here for the Internet. Advertiser
and corporate interference with the news content are similarly
high among those who work in online news, where the line between
independently produced content and advertising may be harder
to detect.
These numbers bear watching-closely.
[top]
A Newsroom-Executive Divide
All of this may be at the root of another problem that has
intensified over the last five years. There is a manifest
and widening gulf between journalists and the people they
work for.
The survey broke news people down into three separate groups.
Executives were those who have chief financial responsibility
for the news company-publishers, CEOs, chief financial officers.
Senior news executives included editors-in-chief, executive
editors, managing editors and executive producers, down to
assistant managing editors. Newsroom staff included everyone
from bureau chiefs down to cub reporters.
In general, journalists have less confidence in their bosses
than they did a few years ago.
Less than a third of national journalists rate their leadership
as "excellent," down six points from five years
ago. Less than a quarter of local journalists feel that way,
also down slightly from five years ago.
It may be no surprise that the level of confidence in the
bosses declines as you move down the ranks. Yet now even senior
news managers are not confident in the people above them.
It is here, at the level of senior news executives, where
the rating of the leadership has dropped most precipitously.
Five years ago, 42% of senior news executives nationally had
high confidence in their bosses. Today, just 30% do. Locally,
the number is 18%.
What is behind the widening morale problem in newsrooms?
The survey results offer two possible explanations. One is
that executives and journalists cannot even agree on the basic
situation in their newsrooms. Nationally, journalists are
twice as likely to report that their staffs have decreased
as are business executives who run news companies.
A second divide between executives and newsroom staffers
is over the question of the impact of economics. Nationally,
journalists are more than twice as likely as executives to
say bottom line pressure is eroding journalistic quality.
The divide exists at the local level as well but not as drastically.
Whatever the reasons for this, unless staffers and bosses
can agree on first describing what is going on in the company
and then agree on its impact, it seems doubtful they could
agree on how to deal with it.
[top]
Specific Areas of Concern
Beyond cutbacks and pressure to help advertisers or corporate
siblings, journalists have other worries as well. Five years
ago, people in the news business shared two overriding concerns.
As we said back then, "They believe that the news media
have blurred the lines between news and entertainment and
that the culture of argument is overwhelming the culture of
reporting…Concerns about punditry overwhelming reporting,
for instance, have swelled dramatically in only four years."
Today, the concerns are more varied and less easy to categorize.
The worries about punditry are still there but they have diminished
both nationally and especially locally.
A bigger issue now is a sense of shallowness. Roughly eight-in-ten
in the news business feel the news media pay "too little
attention … to complex issues," up from five years
ago to levels seen in the mid-1990s, at the peak of the fascination
with tabloid crime stories like O.J. and JonBenet Ramsey.
On the issue of accuracy, journalists seem divided. Nationally,
the number of journalists who feel that news reports are increasingly
sloppy and inaccurate is rising. Locally, it is dropping.
And about some matters people in the news business-across
all levels-are clearly less worried than they were five years
ago.
Fewer journalists today see the press as too cynical. And,
compared with five years ago, fewer also see journalists as
out of touch with their audiences.
Both of these are areas that reform movements such as public
journalism-which was concerned with trying to reconnect journalists
and the public-focused on.
[top]
The Internet as a Place of Confidence
and Cuts
In such a landscape, the Internet should be a glimmer of
hope, and in many ways it is. The State of the News Media
2004 report found that the Internet was one of the few places
where news audiences were growing. Just as importantly, young
people sought out news online in the same percentages as older
people. Privately, some of the country's top newspaper executives
report that they now have more readers on the web than they
do in print. Financially the picture is also promising, if
embryonic. Revenues from the Internet, according to the State
of the News Media report, are growing exponentially, though
for now they remain small.
Generally, the Internet journalists surveyed, most of whom
work for websites of major news organizations, reflect that
booming sense of the future. They rate their product highly:
fully 85% give the websites of national news organizations
a grade of A or B.
Journalists also seem less fearful of technology. While majorities
feel the Internet has too much unvetted and unfiltered material,
most news people also now see the 24-hour news cycle as not
harming journalism. More journalists than five years ago think
the Internet is making journalism better.
Yet the survey points to something troubling here that online
journalists are privately frustrated by. The Internet is the
most likely place in journalism to be suffering staff cuts
(62%).
Given the growth in Internet news audiences and the growing
confidence of journalists about the content, one might have
expected that companies planning on the future would be moving
resources into this growth area.
The fact that this is not happening has two possible implications.
First, it suggests that the news industry is managing for
the short-term to such a degree that it is leaving malnourished
the one area that could grow the business out of its current
dilemma of declining audience. To maintain profits, it is
penny wise and pound foolish. If this is the case, it would
be an old story-and a familiar mistake-repeated again.
The other possibility is that the news business has lost
confidence in the basic economic principle that had fueled
its development for much of the last 200 years:
Namely, that if you can aggregate a large-enough audience
in one place, the revenue stream will work itself out eventually.
Yet the companies who produce online news apparently do not
have confidence that will happen here. If they are not willing
to invest in the newsroom now, when audience and revenues
look promising, what will ever convince them to?
[top]
Confidence in the Public
Ultimately journalism is predicated on faith in the public.
Here, journalists' views have become dramatically more pessimistic.
The percentage of national journalists who have a great deal
of confidence in the ability of the American public to make
good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999.
Confidence among local journalists has fallen as well.
What is going on? Does this suggest that as news people get
closer to their audiences they conclude people are less wise
than they once believed? Is it possible that market research
data is persuading journalists today that they understand
their audiences better and also that those audiences are dumber
than they thought?
Or, is the loss of confidence in the public more tied to
journalists' views about the content of news? They see news
doing a poorer job of covering complex issues and conclude
that this will leave Americans unprepared for making good
decisions.
It is also possible that journalists are leaping to another
conclusion: They see the content of the news becoming shallower
and conclude that this must be what the public wants or why
else would their organizations be providing it?
There is also a fourth possibility: liberal journalists unhappy
with President George W. Bush's policies could be dismayed
that the public chose Bush in 2000 and until recently have
largely approved of his performance.
In the end, whatever the cause of declining faith in the
public, the implications are troubling. Even if the economics
of journalism work themselves out, how can journalists work
on behalf of a public they are coming to see as less wise
and less able? A cynical view of the public becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy that leads journalists to produce a shallower product
because they think the public cannot handle anything else.
[top]
Politics & Ideology
The findings on politics also point to trends worth watching.
Journalists tend to be split over whether the press has become
too timid and also too easy on Bush-and the split is between
national journalists and local. The national journalists tend
to feel the press has been insufficiently critical of Bush.
National journalists also are the more likely to describe
themselves as personally liberal.
But this does not mean that journalists want to abandon the
model of the independent press. Across the board, news people
disapprove of news organizations having a decidedly ideologically
point of view. Even among Internet journalists, often thought
of as writing with more edge, three-quarters do not favor
moving toward this more ideological, more European model of
journalism.
The fact that journalists are more likely to see a conservative
tilt in the news than a liberal one invites various explanations.
It could be a sign of liberal bias. It also could be a natural
response by journalists tired of people producing partisan
journalism on the right positioning themselves as the counterbalance
to a mainstream press they characterize as left wing. There
will be no settling of that.
On the other hand, the fact that the New York Times is the
organization most often cited as liberal may embarrass the
Times. The fact that large majorities of journalists cite
Fox as conservative may not embarrass that cable network.
Journalists' own politics are also harder to analyze than
people might think. The fact that journalists-especially national
journalists-are more likely than in the past to describe themselves
as liberal reinforces the findings of the major academic study
on this question, namely that of David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland
Wilhoit, in their series of books "The American Journalist."
But what does liberal mean to journalists? We would be reluctant
to infer too much here. The survey includes just four questions
probing journalists' political attitudes, yet the answers
to these questions suggest journalists have in mind something
other than a classic big government liberalism and something
more along the lines of libertarianism. More journalists said
they think it is more important for people to be free to pursue
their goals without government interference than it is for
government to ensure that no one is in need.
This libertarian strain is particularly strong among local
journalists, who are also more likely to describe themselves
as moderate.
More research here is probably useful. The debate over press
ideology is fraught with difficulty. Some of the research
done in the past has been, frankly, poor, and on the other
side, some journalists would rather not face the question
at all. Neither of these approaches is satisfactory.
But there is something here for journalists to be concerned
about.
[top]
Crossing from Concern to Frustration
Five years ago we found a profession that had become more
concerned about its performance and more willing to adapt.
The findings back then, we said, paint "a picture of
an industry aware it is at a cross roads. Journalists have
come to agree with their critics and are embarking on self
examination that is a likely first step to change."
Today, some of that change has happened, but what remains
are problems that seem more structural and protracted.
While journalists feel they have gotten closer to their audiences
and more willing to innovate, they also are more pessimistic
about the public. It is possible that journalists feel they
have done much of what they can do themselves to address journalism's
problems. What they are left with are issues they cannot contend
with alone. And they believe the companies they work for in
the last five years have moved in ways that have only made
things worse.
On top of that, there are signs that the growth areas in
journalism are not seeing the kind of investment of resources
to build for the future.
If five years ago we saw the seeds of change, today we see
a trend toward fragmentation among all players involved -
journalists, executives and the public.
Not only do they disagree on solutions, they seem further
apart on identifying the problems
Bill Kovach is chairman of the Committee
of Concerned Journalists. Tom Rosenstiel is director of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism. Amy Mitchell is associate
director.
[top]
<
Previous | Next >
| Home
Introduction
| Commentary | Survey
Findings | Methodology
| Questionnaire
|
Back
to Journalism.org
