The Press: Judging the Fourth Estate: A TiME-Louis Harris Poll

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Harris also discovered that there is virtually no national newspaper in the country. The nation's best-known paper, the New York Times, is familiar to only 30% of American readers, followed by the Wall Street Journal (28%), the National Observer (14%), the Washington Post (13%), and the Los Angeles Times (12%). In the area of confidence, the Wall Street Journal leads by a wide margin, with 55% of its readers expressing "very much trust" in that paper, compared with the 36% of New York Times and National Observer readers with high confidence in those papers.

Another surprising discovery was that nationally syndicated newspaper columnists do not make a very strong impression across the country. Drew Pearson is the most popular, with 7% of the nation's readers; various "advice" columnists as a group receive 5% of readers' responses. They are followed by Art Buchwald (4%), William F. Buckley Jr. (3%), James Reston (3%) and "gossip" columnists collectively (3%). Of all readers, only 16% cite any nationally syndicated favorite, while one in four names a local columnist.

On the whole, substantially more readers feel that they are getting more information from their newspapers today than those who feel they are getting less. What emerges from these findings, says Harris, "is a picture of a highly localized press, subject to fairly wide area-by-area differences in readership assessment. For, indeed, each newspaper is different in terms of the news mix, editorial outlook, and in its handling of the components of modern journalism."

Newsmagazines

The void left by the absence of a national newspaper appears to be partially filled by newsmagazines, according to Harris' findings. TIME and Newsweek are well known, particularly among the college-educated, and U.S. News & World Report is also familiar to those with college degrees. TIME is familiar to more than half of the public and to 77% of college graduates. Newsweek's familiarity is only slightly less. U.S. News is known to only 29% of the general public, but its readers give it the highest vote of confidence, with 46% saying that they "trust it very much." TIME receives a "high trust" rating from 42% of its readers, Newsweek 40% .

While the newsmagazines apparently constitute the only national written press and are rated extremely high for fairness and trust, the survey indicates that television has made the individual less dependent on them as primary sources of straight news. One out of three Americans says that he depends less on newsmagazines to get the latest news, compared with one in seven who relies on them more heavily. In view of the rising circulation of all three magazines mentioned, this finding indicates that readers turn to newsmagazines increasingly for background and interpretation of the news that they may hear or read elsewhere, and for the magazines' broader cultural features and special coverage.

Television

More than nine out of ten Americans say that they regularly watch TV news, though this percentage falls off among the least-and best-educated members of society. Its strongest swath cuts right down the middle, where TV news is most popular among the middle-aged and the middle-income and in medium-size communities.