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

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NBC and CBS clearly dominate the nationwide news airwaves, splitting 70% of the regular viewing public evenly between them. ABC has a regular news viewership of only 13%. When asked to name their favorite TV newsmen, 46% readily volunteer Walter Cronkite, 45% name David Brinkley and 44% say Chet Huntley. After CBS' Eric Sevareid, who is known to 9% of America's viewers, all the rest are scattered.

In its reputation for fairness of coverage, television news also does better than newspapers. While a majority believes that newspapers are "sometimes unfair and slanted in news coverage," only a minority of one in three sees TV news this way. Nor is television accused of bowing to special interests as much as newspapers: only 12% compared with 29%.

Harris finds that "there is solid evidence that television news's 'sins' are much more likely to live after it." Of 29% who report they can recall a specific case of some medium being unfair to a particular group or individual, nearly three out of four remembered something they saw on television. More significantly, by a ratio of nearly three to one, viewers believe that "the TV camera can lie," a view that runs strongest among professional people, the college-educated and the young. When asked to give examples of unfair television coverage, one out of three mentioned the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and 21% cited race riots.

The American public takes television to task more harshly than newspapers for its portrayal of violence and sex. Nearly half of those surveyed leveled a "too full of violence" charge against television news v. only 38% against newspapers, and nearly one in three finds TV news too full of sex.

"Television has made a deep impact," Harris concludes after studying the figures, "but with personalization of news and a picture format, there is an ephemeral quality. The printed word seems to stick to people's ribs more than the audio or visual form of journalism, though television is difficult to match for immediacy and excitement."

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Clearly, criticisms of the press—most of which are dutifully reported by it —have alerted the public to its failings and fallibilities. Moreover, as the media become more responsive to the nation's social, urban and ecological ills, more and more Americans are measuring news coverage against their individual observations of the event or circumstance, a comparison that often generates hostility. "People don't really want it told like it is," says Professor Penn Kimball of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. "They want it told like they think it is." Or, as David Brinkley puts it, "There's an increasing displeasure with the state of affairs in this country—the people hear about it, tend not to like it, and want me to shut up. If you're dissatisfied, the first thing you do is turn against the media that bring it to you."