A 24/7 war pulls viewers to cable news

Contemporary American military commanders like to talk about “shaping the battlefield.”

As the results of a new Times Poll released today show, the around-the-clock precision-guided war that U.S. forces are waging against Iraq also seems to have shaped, at least temporarily, the way the American public obtains its news.

For some time now, Americans asked to identify the news sources they regularly rely upon have given fairly consistent answers. In December, for example, the Gallup Poll asked a national sample of adults which news medium they turned to every day. By far, the largest group -- 57% -- said local television; 47% relied on local newspapers; 43% turned to one of the three nightly network newscasts; 41% said one of the all-news cable channels; and 15.8% turned to the Internet.

This week, however, the Times Poll asked, “Where are you getting most of your information about the war in Iraq?”

The responses were strikingly different: 69% of the respondents said they are relying on one of the three cable news networks; 30% said newspapers; 23% cited local television news; 18% rely on one of the three broadcast networks; just 13% are going online for their news. Respondents were allowed to give three answers ranked in order of preference.

Much of this shift, analysts say, stems from the nature of the war itself.

“It’s not surprising to me that most Americans are getting their war coverage from cable news shows,” said Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll. “CNN, Fox and MSNBC are covering the war 24/7, whereas the network news and local television news are not. People know they can tune in anytime of the day or night and get up-to-the-minute information about the war. The Persian Gulf War in 1991 helped put CNN on the map with their around-the-clock coverage, but they were the only cable news station at that time.”

In fact, on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War, CNN -- whose correspondents were the only U.S. journalists to broadcast the bombing of Baghdad live -- experienced a five-fold increase in the size of its audience. This time around, all the players in the now-competitive cable news niche have gained viewers, but nothing even close to that magnitude.

To veteran newspaper editor Bill Kovach, now chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the Times Poll’s findings suggest “the public is behaving logically. The war goes on day and night and so does cable news, so you can tune in when you want. What I find pleasantly surprising is that people turn next to newspapers, which indicates their hunger for the context and analysis that only come with a little time for reflection.”

Marty Kaplan, who directs USC’s Norman Lear Center and is associate dean of its Annenberg School for Communication, expresses one important caution about cable news’ apparent dominance of this war’s coverage. “These findings don’t track the actual number of viewers,” he said. “If you do that, you come away with the fact that network news is still the nation’s great daily public forum.”

Those numbers are striking: Taken together, Fox, CNN and MSNBC now have an average nightly audience of 7.86 million. MSNBC, whose audience has grown by 96% since March 19, still is averaging less than 1 million viewers a night. By contrast, the three traditional broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have a combined audience for their nightly newscasts of more than 30 million. The aggregate audience for their morning news shows is more than 16 million.

But with 95% of the Times Poll’s respondents saying they are closely following the news, their substantial reliance on the cable networks does indicate something significant at work. What’s involved, according to Kaplan, is the abolition of the so-called news cycle in the public’s mind. “People now understand that what we call news is an activity that is happening on its own schedule and that, if they want, they now can obtain information about it on their own schedule.”

For many analysts, in fact, the critical distinction nowadays is not between “new” and “old media,” but between what they call “push” and “pull” media. The archetypal examples of push media are the nightly network newscast and the morning newspaper delivered to your door. Getting the news from them requires that you keep an appointment, that you’re ready to receive the news at the times they’re scheduled to deliver it. Pull media, by contrast, allow readers or viewers to reach in and pull out the news whenever they want it.

“These poll findings tell us something awfully interesting about the death of push news on television,” Kaplan said. “Viewers are saying they want news on their own time schedule rather than when the programmers say they should have it.”

Kaplan sees another interesting technological insight embedded in the poll’s finds. “It’s interesting that reliance on the Internet for news is actually down since the war began,” he said. “Because the Internet, like cable news, doesn’t have to obey the dictates of programmers, you would have assumed that they would climb together. What I think this disconnect underlines is that despite the proliferation of home computers, the interest in Internet news sites and bloggers is still the preoccupation of a small subset of Americans.

“Some of that,” he said, “has to do with the relatively slow pace at which people master technologies. Computers are hard for a lot of people, but nearly everybody has sufficiently mastered their channel changer to cruise from Fox to CNN to MSNBC. Then, if you add the Food channel and the Home & Garden network to your favorites, you’ve got a life. I suspect the very intensity of television’s coverage of this war is leading people to go to the cable news channel for a jolt of terror and excitement, then switch to the culinary channel to watch somebody preparing comfort food, then back to the news when they’ve recovered.

“What’s important,” Kaplan said, “is that you’re no longer dependent on a programmer’s notion of where your pleasure-pain scale ought to be set.”

Another of the Times’ Poll’s most interesting finds is that 61% of the respondents believe the press is doing a good job covering the war. To a certain extent, what we may have here is what might be called “the CNBC effect.”

You’ll recall that during the go-go ‘90s, you couldn’t go into a bar or a doctor’s office without finding the financial news channel with its real-time stock ticker scrolling across the screen. With the value of their portfolios at an all-time high, everybody wanted as much financial news as possible. You don’t see much of that anymore; CNBC’s ratings have declined as more and more people leave their 401k statements unopened on their desks.

But just as the messenger bringing bad news can be shot; the bearer of glad tidings is crowned with laurels.

As long as most Americans think the news from Iraq is good, they’ll probably go on approving the news organizations that bring it to them.