While there was no shortage of polls published during the election campaigns, most opinion surveys offered little more than a snapshot of attitudes or voting intentions. FAIR’s survey of the U.S. electorate during the 1992 presidential election campaign, by contrast, was concerned not only with what people thought, but with the knowledge that lay behind those attitudes, and where that information came from. Democracy in the U.S. depends increasingly upon the news media. Surveys show that for most citizens, the media are the principal source of information about politics and candidates. Of the many news outlets available, the most important [...]
Search Results for: Justin Lewis and Michael Morgan
Apr
01
1991
TV: The More You Watch, the Less You Know
Media polls have proclaimed, in self-congratulatory fashion, that about 70 percent of the public thinks the media did a good job in reporting the Gulf War. But if one measures the media by how well they inform the public, a recent study indicates they failed dismally. The study, conducted by the University of Massachusetts' Center for Studies in Communication, found that the more people watched TV during the Gulf crisis, the less they knew about the underlying issues, and the more likely they were to support the war. When the research team tested public knowledge of basic facts about the [...]
