News Media Trends

In the early days of the war with Iraq, 77% of online Americans used the Internet in some connection with the war. They went online to get information about the war, to learn and share differing opinions about the conflict, to send and receive emails about events, to express their views and to offer prayers.

Summary of Findings Wall-to-wall media reports on the war in Iraq have not resulted in significant improvement in the public’s view of the media’s coverage of this war compared with the first Persian Gulf conflict. However, there are signs that 24-7 televised images of war are taking an increasing psychological toll. In recent days, more […]

Introduction and Summary Over the past two days the American public has become much less confident that the war in Iraq is going well, but large majorities continue to support President Bush and the decision to go to war. Polling on March 23-24 finds significantly fewer Americans thinking the war is going very well compared […]

How aware is the American public of the debate currently taking place about changing the rules over media ownership in the United States?

The American public reacted very favorably to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The flurry of polling conducted over the past week indicates that he made convincing points to the American public about the dangers posed by Saddam’s Hussein’s regime. Powell and President Bush, in his State of the Union […]

Without much notice, the federal government is moving toward the most sweeping change ever in the rules that govern ownership of the American news media.

This shift could reduce the independence of the news media and the ability of Americans to take part in public debate. Yet because of mea ...

Introduction and Summary More Americans used the Internet to get campaign information in 2002 than during the last midterm election four years ago. While much of this increase has come from the overall growth in the online population, a higher proportion of Internet users sought election news than did so four years ago (22% now, […]

Americans expect to find what they are looking for online in news, health care, government information, and shopping.

Introduction and Summary A series of horrifying sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C. area attracted the most public interest of any news story in 2002. But the growing prospects of war with Iraq, as well as the continuing threat of terrorism and the aftermath of 9/11, also drew high levels of attention throughout the year. […]

In a year when the nation was changed by the war on terrorism, a recession and financial scandals, the Project for Excellence in Journalism's fifth annual study found that local television news remained largely unchanged. The study was published in the November/December 2002 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.