Coverage of Waco, King Trial Criticized : Media: Times Mirror survey found one of every two Americans followed the events. However, respondents felt both stories were overblown.

Americans were troubled by the way in which the press covered the cult tragedy in Waco, Tex., and the Rodney G. King trial in Los Angeles, a survey released today finds.

Roughly one out of every two Americans followed the Waco and King stories “very closely” last month, an extraordinarily high level of interest, according to the Times Mirror news interest index, a monthly survey of public response to the news.

Yet 42% of the public also volunteered that the press was excessive in its coverage of the Waco tragedy, and 26% felt the press similarly overcovered the King trial. Fifteen percent said they thought the press had devoted too much coverage to the gay and lesbian march in Washington.

The content of the Waco coverage also raised questions. Two in five Americans felt that press criticism of the Clinton Administration and the FBI for their handling of the Branch Davidian siege was overblown, the survey found.

The public was even more suspicious of press coverage of the King trial. In retrospect, a 56% majority of Americans said the press contributed to the Los Angeles riots after the first trial last year because its coverage “encouraged people to go and join the rioting,” respondents told the survey.

While a majority, 54%, thought that the coverage of the just-completed second King trial was fair, a significant 34% thought the coverage was biased, and two-thirds of those felt it favored the prosecution. Whites and Latinos were three times as likely to complain that the coverage favored the prosecution. Conversely, twice as many blacks saw press bias favoring the police defendants on trial.

Race also played a factor in whether the public blamed the press for making last year’s riots worse. A 58% to 29% majority of whites thought the press encouraged rioting, but only 39% of black respondents shared this view.

The survey, which interviewed 1,009 adults between April 29 and May 2, has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, and is subject to further error due to bias in the wording of the questions.

In other areas:

* The civil war in Bosnia achieved a significant level of public attentiveness last month, as President Clinton signaled his willingness to commit U.S. forces to stop the “ethnic cleansing.” Nearly one in four Americans, 23%, said they followed this story very closely, up from 15% in January and February.

* Interest in the U.S. economy, in contrast, slackened last month. In February, 49% of Americans said they were paying “close” attention to news about the economy. That number fell to 37% in April, and only 27% were paying “very close” attention. These figures represent the lowest level of public concern about the economy in 18 months.

* Just under a third of Americans, 30%, say they are “very closely” following news about health care reform.

* Slightly less, 27% of the public, said they were very closely following news of the Clinton Administration’s order to allow women in combat, and fewer women than men were doing that, 25% vs. 29%. Health care was the only subject which women were paying greater attention to than men. That higher interest on the part of men in the news in general is perceived by some critics as a sign that the news agenda is still too heavily defined by men and male interests.