Journalists Not Satisfied With Their Performance in the Campaign

With Election Day just two weeks away, there are signs that journalists
themselves are not happy with campaign coverage. A new survey of
members of a national journalism organization finds that nearly three
quarters of journalists give the press a C, D or F grade for its
campaign coverage so far. In the survey, conducted by the Committee of
Concerned Journalists of its members, o­nly 3% give the press an A
grade, while another 27% give the news media a B. At the same time, 42%
give the coverage a C and 27% say D or F.

CCJ Member Survey
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With Election Day just two weeks away, there are signs that journalists
themselves are not happy with campaign coverage.

A new survey of members of a national journalism organization finds
that nearly three quarters of journalists give the press a C, D or F
grade for its campaign coverage so far.

In the survey, conducted by the Committee of Concerned Journalists of
its members, o­nly 3% give the press an A grade, while another 27% give
the news media a B. At the same time, 42% give the coverage a C and 27%
say D or F.

The poll surveyed 499 CCJ members between October 8 and October 15th.
The Committee is a national consortium of journalists and journalism
educators in various media.

What are the particular concerns these journalists have? By large
majorities they feel the news media has become sidetracked by trivial
issues, has been too reactive and has focused too much o­n the inside
baseball that doesn't really matter to voters, according to the survey.

They give particularly low grades to television, be it local, cable or
network, and much higher grades to newspapers and o­nline coverage.

Despite their concerns, there are some positive feelings. The
journalists surveyed feel the media landscape has been made richer than
ever by the proliferation of outlets, especially o­nline, and note that
the trend toward more fact checking is a good development.

When asked to volunteer ideas for the future, by more than two to o­ne
the largest group of suggestions involved focusing more o­n things that
really matter to voters or reflect where the two candidates would
likely take the country. "Cover the issues as if (journalists) actually
cared about the fate of a free society rather than the fate of their
stories," wrote o­ne impassioned respondent. "Focus o­n what's
important-the records, ideas and integrity of the candidates-rather
than o­n tactics and sideshows," wrote o­ne respondent.

Another large group of responses complained that the press has become
biased or too opinionated, an idea also detected to be o­n the rise
this year in surveys of citizens. "Remember impartiality?" wrote o­ne
respondent. "Try it. You might like it."

The poll is not a representative sample of all journalists in the
country in that it was not drawn from a randomly selected sample of
that population, but is taken from a self-selected group who has chosen
over the years to join the Committee of Concerned Journalists. The
Committee is a membership organization concerned about press standards
and interested in sharing ideas about the profession.

Still, the number of respondents represents a sizable group of people
from the press. The survey was received by 2,377 CCJ members out of the
total membership of 4,600. That is the number of CCJ members who
identified themselves as having United States-based email and whose
servers accepted rather than bounced back the survey. Of those 2377,
499 filled out the survey, for a response rate of 21%. This rate is
comparable to that currently obtained by most media organizations'
political polls of the general public. CCJ members reflect a wide
spectrum of American journalists, from print, o­nline, radio and
television and varying in age and market size.

In general, the survey respondents reflected concerns that the coverage
is too reactive and superficial, too biased, too timid or lazy, and
that journalists need to better verify the facts.

The sentiments of several respondents seemed captured in o­ne answer
that called for some kind of larger reflection: "Every newsroom should
take a year and have a thoughtful, well informed series of discussions
to answer the question: Is the way we do journalism helping or hurting
our Democracy?"

The journalists surveyed have notably different views of the coverage
from different media. Newspapers and o­nline sites fared best. This was
followed by print news magazines.

Cable, local and network television fared worst. The views of network
TV, which includes both morning and evening news plus news magazines,
seemed at least in some respondents' minds to have been influenced by
the experience of CBS News and its flawed coverage of memos involving
President Bush's record in the National Guard. Several respondents went
out of their way to complain about CBS in their open-ended responses.

Overall, 58% of journalists gave newspapers an A or B grade; 46% gave
that to o­nline sites; 45% gave A or B grades to news magazines; 30%
gave A's or B's to radio news; 22% gave such grades to cable; o­nly 16%
gave A or B grades to network news. Local news fared worst, with o­nly
11% giving the medium an A or B grade.

The journalists surveyed also had differing views of what aspects of
the campaign the press covered best. Generally, journalists thought the
media had done its strongest job covering tactics, horse race and
strategy, with 50% giving an A or B grade. Next best, 34% of
journalists gave the press an A or B grade for covering voters and the
mood of the country.

But when it came to the character of the candidates, o­nly 26% of
journalists surveyed gave the press an A or B. When it came to record,
o­nly 25% graded B or above. And lowest of all, o­nly 20% gave the
press an A or B for coverage of the candidate's proposals and ideas.

The nature of and depth of the complaints could also be detected when
journalists were asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements
about the press coverage. o­nly 31% agreed, either strongly or even
somewhat, with the idea that the press had been "appropriately
responsible and aggressive" in its coverage this year.

The two most widely held sentiments seemed to parallel this sense of a
lack of aggressiveness. Fully 89% of journalists agreed (strongly or
somewhat) that coverage has been "too reactive with little digging
below the surface." And a nearly identical 88% felt that coverage has
been "trivialized by undue emphasis or lazy coverage of such side
issues as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Kitty Kelly's book or the
CBS 'memo-gate.'"

There was some optimism in the responses. A sizable majority, 68% of
journalists surveyed, felt "the media landscape for understanding the
2004 presidential campaign is richer than ever."

When asked about ideas for how the press could improve, respondents
felt similarly that the political press has been made timid or reactive
by growing public distrust and corporate cutbacks, that it is
distracted by poor thinking or herd mentality or is plagued by a lack
of professionalism and creeping bias.

The largest set of responses, 30%, involved the idea that the press
needed to focus more o­n things that really mattered or would affect
citizens-such as the records and policy proposals of the candidates and
the concerns of voters themselves.

The second most common set of suggestions, 16%, involved the idea that
journalists needed to be more aggressive about verifying their facts
and digging deeper below the surface. "Get your damn facts straight,"
admonished o­ne respondent. "Better research and investigation," said
another. "Refuse the spin," said yet another.

The third most common set of suggestions, 14%, involved the idea that
coverage was increasingly biased or opinionated. This cut both ways.
Some respondents thought the press was too liberal: "Stop carrying
Kerry's water." Others detected the opposite: "Stop catching for Bush."
But most, rather than sensing a clear ideological tilt, implied a
growing lack of professional discipline, in some cases born out of lack
of rigor or thoughtless haste. "Be less biased and more informed about
both sides," admonished o­ne respondent. "Be objective," various
respondents offered. o­ne in particular seemed to capture the sense
implied in many of these replies-that objectivity was a professional
discipline, not a suggestion that journalists were people without
opinions. "Return to the idea of objectivity as a method, instead of
the crazy notion that the journalist is objective," the respondent
wrote.

Beyond these first three groups of suggestions-that journalists needed
to cover what mattered, dig deeper, and avoid bias-the next most common
set of suggestions, offered by 12% of respondents, involved the idea
that the press needs to stiffen its spine, be more skeptical and hold
politicians feet to the fire.

"Ask hard questions and make sure the candidates really answer the
questions," was o­ne response, echoed nearly identically by dozens of
others.

Some 6% of respondents offered the closely related idea that they
wanted the press to do a better job of telling the truth or getting at
the truth, not just reporting two sides of spinners and calling it
balanced. "Find the truth with your own independent reporting and
research and state it. Do not report two conflicting claims and let
readers sort them out. This kind of journalism is terribly vulnerable
to manipulation. It also confuses and alienates citizens."

Finally, various individuals asked their colleagues to think better and
be smarter (6%), try to put the campaign into a broader context of
philosophical debate (3%), and not give in to corporate pressure but
pursue the public interest (3%).

The survey also asked respondents to identify o­ne thing they felt that
stood out this year in coverage either positively or negatively.

On the positive side, several items earned repeated mention. o­ne was
the debates. National Public Radio got several mentions for its
coverage, the most of any single news organization. The weekly news
magazines were also mentioned by a number of respondents for good
coverage. Several people also mentioned growing use of "truth
squadding" the campaign rhetoric and debate rhetoric as a positive
development. Factcheck.org, a fact checking organization set up by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and
staffed by veteran journalists and cited by members of both campaigns,
also earned several mentions.

On the negative, there were also some patterns to what was mentioned.
o­ne was the focus o­n the military records of both candidates, be it
the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth or the focus o­n
President Bush's National Guard record. Various respondents, some 30 of
the nearly 500, also specifically mentioned CBS's handling of the memo
story. "The embarrassing CBS use of bad documents-and the delay in
coming clean," said o­ne respondent. At the same time, CBS was o­ne of
a handful of news organizations to be singled out for praise for a
particular story or series, in this case its "What Does It Mean to You"
series o­n the evening news.

What is less clear is fundamentally what might be done to lead the
press to follow this advice. Although in some cases the complaints may
be new or at least growing-the issue of bias for instance may seem
larger this year-many of these complaints are familiar to journalists.
The question of too much horse race or insider baseball is nothing new.
The question of being manipulated by candidates is hardly original to
2004. The sense that the coverage of what really matters to voters is
lost is not a sudden development. Nor is the complaint that the
coverage gets sidetracked by minor concerns.

The larger question in many ways is why, if these concerns are raised
campaign after campaign, the press seems unable to address or correct
them.

( '? mediachannel has been working on this for the past several years,
their special election watch has been keeping things above board as
much as possible. But the media folks are owned by big money.... and
so it goes.



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