All-News Channels Find Big Audience

With the Iraq war in its third week, 95% of Americans say they are following news coverage closely and 61% generally approve of the way the media are covering the conflict, according to the Los Angeles Times poll.

In a sign of changing times, nearly 70% say they are getting most of their information about the war from all-news cable channels such as Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Only 18% indicated they are relying on the traditional nightly network news broadcasts produced by ABC, CBS and NBC, the survey found.

The results confirm a trend in which “the cable networks truly own this story, because of their kinetic, real-time nature,” said Matthew Felling, media director for the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. “The cable networks make nightly news broadcasts a bit anachronistic, because once we have access to information as it happens, the patience to wait for the news at 6 p.m. diminishes.”

Media coverage of the Iraq war has been controversial from the start because of a Pentagon-sponsored program in which more than 600 journalists are accompanying U.S. military forces. Under the so-called embedding program, reporters are able to transmit stories soon after events occur in the field, but they must not communicate their military unit’s precise location or plans until they get the green light from field commanders.

Some critics voiced fears that these reporters would find it difficult to remain objective about the soldiers they are covering. But after two weeks of war coverage, a majority do not share those concerns.

In a view shared nearly equally by Democrats and Republicans, 55% said the greater media access is good for the country because it gives the American people an uncensored view of events. By contrast, 37% said embedded coverage is bad because it provides too much information about military actions as they unfold, the poll found.

“I think all the reporters we have over there are showing us the battlefield, the way it really feels, and I suppose that’s as good a kind of coverage as you can get,” said Fred Cowardin, a Florida respondent in the survey. “I can’t personally verify the accuracy of everything I’m seeing, but it’s much easier to believe with this access.”

Yet Edward, a South Carolina respondent who declined to give his last name, said, “When you have so much live coverage with everybody watching, it’s accessible not just to our country but to people all over the world. If it’s not censored, we could be giving too much to the enemy.”

The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 745 respondents on Wednesday and Thursday, and has a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The results “show that the media are getting really good marks covering this war, and that’s important because so many people are watching,” she said.

The findings are generally the same for all regions of the country except for the South, where people are evenly split on whether the embedded reporting is a good thing, Pinkus added. With stories about the war pouring from cable TV, network news broadcasts, newspapers, radio and other media sources, 69% told pollsters they are relying on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC for details; 30% said they look to newspapers; 23% relied on local news broadcasts and 13% mentioned the Internet. (Each person was permitted to give up to three answers.)

“The all-news cable dominance isn’t that surprising, given the ubiquitous nature of these broadcasts, and it’s a big change from the era when nightly news broadcasts dominated the field,” said Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute, a media research and training organization. “But one hopes that people are relying on more than just one source for information. If you rely on just one kind of media, you’re going to be getting narrow slices of what are already thin pieces of the macro story.”