It's just news, not brainwashing by Christopher Dornan
Source : Globe & Mail
December 17, 2005
Want to know what makes everyone mental about the news media? Bias. Everyone gets all hot under the collar about media bias. All points on the political spectrum are forever detecting its insidious influence hijacking the democratic process or just plain mucking things up.
But are the media biased? Well, let's ask the experts. Which is to say, let's ask their audiences.
For the duration of the campaign, Decima Research and the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication are collaborating in an on-line poll. One set of questions has already asked about where voters prefer to get their election news. Another asked where they would situate themselves politically.
This is a new type of poll using the Internet rather than a telephone survey. Decima has assembled a really large sample of people -- 4,337 -- who have agreed to answer questions on-line each week. Decima describes the margin of error this way: "For a comparable random probability sample, the findings would be considered accurate to within 1.49 percentage points, 19 times out of 20."
The results are in and not surprisingly different news media outlets attract audiences from different political precincts. They also seem to reproduce voting tendencies at large. If the TV networks were running for election, neither the CBC, nor CTV, nor Global could form a majority government.
More than one in three anglophone Canadians outside Quebec (38 per cent) say they will turn frequently or very frequently to CBC's The National for election coverage. Exactly the same number say they will turn to CTV's National News, and 26 per cent say they will turn to Global National. Some viewers chose more than one.The CBC's viewership skews to the centre and left-of-centre, more popular with Liberal and NDP voters than Conservative. Only 32 per cent of Albertans say they would watch the CBC frequently, as opposed to 45 per cent of Maritimers.
CTV's audience draws equally from Liberal and Conservative voters, but is less popular with NDPers. Its viewers also tend to be older than the CBC's and in a lower tax bracket.
Global gets proportionally more of its viewers from B.C. and Alberta, and attracts more Conservative voters than either the CBC or CTV.
Does this mean the various networks each have their own bias? If by "bias" one means willfully or unconsciously falsified coverage, nope. It does mean, however, that the three networks offer different shadings of political events, in different packages and in different timeslots, that appeal to different segments of the public for different reasons. Nothing wrong with that. If it doesn't quite amount to a marketplace of ideas, it's at least a news media mini mall.
Ask not whether the news media are trying to brainwash you. Ask instead why you prefer the newscast you do.
The thing about the networks, though, is that they all insist they have no partisan agenda. On that score, if nothing else, you have to admire the honesty of the new Maclean's magazine under publisher-editor Ken Whyte. It makes no secret of where its preferences lie. The current issue features a cover shot of NDP candidate Svend Robinson and the headline "Svend him packing." A subhead urges Vancouver Centre voters to "please do the rest of Canada a favour."
"Svend him packing" is a brilliant headline, and if you're of that cast of mind, the new Maclean's will drop into your lap as though the national media have finally come to their senses. If you're not of that cast of mind, you will be repelled by it. It's too personal, too abrasive. You will not be inclined to buy a magazine with that kind of attitude. You might not be inclined to work there either.
So Maclean's, I guess, has decided to stake its future on a core readership of worked-up right wingers, convinced that a right-good read is key to growing that constituency. Good luck to them. Maybe it will work this time. As a business strategy, it didn't work at the last three publications where Ken Whyte had a guiding hand: the National Post, Saturday Night magazine and Alberta Report.
But, then, Ken Whyte is fighting for his life, no less than any candidate on the hustings. And his poll numbers aren't looking good. In the Decima-Carleton survey, when asked where they turn for election news, respondents mentioned everything from their local dailies to Internet blogs. National weekly newsmagazines weren't even a blip.
Christopher Dornan is the director of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication. The Decima-Carleton poll results can be found at http://decima.ca/en/lab/election2006/ and http://www.carleton.ca/sjc
Letters to the Editor
Robert Hurst, President, CTV News, December 22, 2005
Toronto -- Re It's Just News, Not Brainwashing (Dec. 17): Christopher Dornan, director of the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication, writes about a new Decima Internet poll that showed 38 per cent of Canadians (outside Quebec) turn to the CBC for election coverage, while another 38 per cent tuned to CTV. This statistic suggests that Canadians consume their election coverage in equal amounts from the two networks.
Surveys are nice, but, in television, the only currency is ratings. And in the ratings world, both Canada's measurement services, Nielsen Media Research and BBM Canada, agree that, when it comes to election coverage, Canadians continue to make CTV their overwhelming choice. Consider the following facts.
This fall, Canadians have made CTV National News their clear choice for election coverage and more, pulling in 48 per cent more viewers than the CBC's The National (CTV National News at 968,000 viewers, CBC's The National at 652,000).
Last week's English-language debate saw 654,000 Canadians tune to CTV, 27 per cent more than tuned to the CBC.
In June of 2004, CTV's federal election coverage earned 1.23 million viewers, 18 per cent more viewers than the CBC (1.04 million). In all, CTV's coverage reached 7.36 million Canadians, more than one million beyond the CBC's reach (6.24 million).
In these instances and more, the real evidence says CTV's election coverage is hands-down a clear winner.
Tony Burman, Editor-in-Chief, CBC News, December 23, 2005
Toronto -- CTV's Robert Hurst (The News Ratings -- letter, Dec. 22) takes umbrage with a Decima poll that shows 38 per cent of Canadians "turn to the CBC for election coverage" while a similar percentage turns to CTV.
Not satisfied with parity with CBC, Mr. Hurst tries to switch the focus to CTV by distorting the ratings. Without acknowledging it, he ignores the thousands of Canadians who watch CBC News programming on Newsworld and, in one of his references, actually includes the CBC lockout period when CBC programming was disrupted.
If you include Newsworld viewers as well as those who watch CTV news programs on CTV Newsnet, the accurate audience ratings from Nielsen Media are the following: Since the end of the CBC lockout, CBC's The National has been averaging 1.03 million viewers a night compared with 989,000 on CTV. CBC's overall audience for the recent election debate was 753,000 viewers against CTV's total audience of 706,000. And in the 2004 election, CBC's audience was 2.05 million versus 1.8 million for CTV in the pivotal 90-minute block after the polls closed.
Rather than bragging about CTV as the "hands-down clear winner," as Mr. Hurst does, I think we should all celebrate the fact that Canadians have a choice between strong and professional news organizations.
