Survey Says Quake News Gripped Most of Nation

More Americans followed news about the San Francisco earthquake than any other event since the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, according to a new survey released Thursday.

And the opening of the Berlin Wall, while not nearly as closely watched, gripped the attention of about half of all Americans, according to the Times Mirror News Interest Index, a monthly survey of public reaction to the news.

That was about the same number of people as closely followed the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in China, the Supreme Court decisions on abortion and flag burning and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

At the same time, few Americans, 13%, seem particularly interested in renewed hostilities in Nicaragua or the recent off-year elections.

But nearly three in four Americans “very closely” followed news of the earthquake, according to the survey. In the four years since Times Mirror began regularly monitoring public response to the news, only the Challenger disaster in July, 1986, rated higher, at 80%.

All sectors of the American public from all parts of the country were fascinated by the earthquake. Even two-thirds of people under 30, the group usually least interested in news events, say that they “very closely” followed it.

The political changes in East Germany were very closely followed by fewer than 30% initially. But when the Berlin Wall was opened, interest shot up to 50%, making it one of the 10 most closely followed events in the four years since the poll began.

Events in Nicaragua and the recent elections, by contrast, scored unusually low, near the bottom of news events in the last four years. Both stories scored even lower than the divorce of boxer Mike Tyson and Robin Givens in October, 1988, an event that the survey revealed was widely overcovered in relation to the public’s interest.

Even the World Series, which got only about half of the expected TV ratings, was very closely followed by 23% of those polled, nearly twice as many as Nicaragua and the elections.