Last Friday, The Gallup Organization released data from its latest Lifestyle survey which measured, among other things, the “frequency with which they [Americans, 18-years-old and above] get their news from each of 13 media sources, spanning television, radio, print, and the Internet.” Gallup’s press release announcing the survey results asserted:
The rapid growth in the Internet news audience may have slowed in the last two years, and cable news viewership has declined. Through it all, local television news has captured a daily audience that includes slightly more than half of Americans, making it the No. 1 source of news in recent years.
After reviewing the full results, it seems that Gallup’s assertion may be correct, but given the survey instrument’s wording, sequence, and methods, there are apt to be errors, perhaps major errors, regarding how people actually get their news. For example, the survey asked the audience about “media sources” and frequency of use, but perhaps did not establish clearly enough the difference between buying a print version of a newspaper at the corner newsstand as opposed to viewing the same article on one’s computer. When the survey asks how often one gets news from local newspapers in one’s area, I would have been tempted to answer “every day,” perhaps forgetting momentarily that I ‘get’ these newspapers via the Internet. In such a case, the survey’s methods don’t properly distinguish between print and digital versions of the paper. Further, it is entirely possible that I could answer “every day,” again forgetting that The New York Times is a so-called national newspaper (for me, of course, it’s also local). Granted, this latter confusion is likely not widespread, but the former—the lack of specificity about print versus digital versions of a newspaper—could lead to some errant conclusions regarding news consumption.
And given the trends in podcasting, there may be more blurring of the lines in store for us in the future, further rendering Gallup’s survey methodology suspect. For example, I do not own a television set, so prior to 2006, it was very difficult for me to watch the Sunday morning roundtables, but thanks to podcasting, I can now download Messrs. Russert and Schieffer to my heart’s content.
The categories of media sources about which Gallup inquired are as follows:
- Local television news from TV stations in your area
- Local newspapers in your area
- Nightly network news programs on ABC, CBS or NBC
- Cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC
- Public television news
- Morning news and interview programs on the national TV networks
- News on the Internet
- Radio talk shows
- National Public Radio (NPR)
- National newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today
It is not unreasonable to assume that some survey participants caught on to the problems of classification inherent in Gallup’s approach and tried consciously not to double count, thinking it might screw up the results, such that, if you already counted your viewing of the NBC Nightly News under one heading, you might fail to mention it under another, and this would, of course, frack up the whole survey.
At this point in the development of podcasting, I wouldn’t expect such a problem to warrant completely throwing out the survey results, but in the future, it will play a larger and larger role in news consumption, especially since this past year has seen the major networks begin podcasting most of its news content. To keep up, Gallup should probably think about refining its survey instrument to eliminate the confusion.
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