America's Most Trusted Name in News -- Fox News?

A survey reports that Fox News is the most trusted of the television news sources.

Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust. 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.

Not sure why MSNBC is excluded.  Or PBS.  Or Comedy Central with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

For years CNN has run that "most trusted name in news" tagline so now I have to wonder whether they'll rethink it based on this survey.

But, the methodology says:

PPP conducted a national survey of 1,151 registered voters on January 18th and 19th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-2.8%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.

Not sure why you'd want registered voters when asking about trust in news, since many people watch the news who are not registered voters.  Curious, or not so curious, given how "registered" voters tend to skew a bit toward more of a Fox News demographic.  Even so, in fairness, Fox is kicking butt so given its audience size you'd expect it to win this contest.  A better way would be to collapse all three broadcast networks and see how they stack up.

The actual news release, in annoying pdf format, is here. It's an automated poll, as you can see if you scroll down the pdf file I listed above, so the findings may unravel in a more traditional, systematic survey.  Also you find some interesting crosstabs.  Key points I found:

• CNN wins among moderates.  It also does better among women than men, but Fox beats 'em with both categories.
  
• Fox beats CNN among whites but not in any other racial/ethnic category.
• In the major age groups, Fox beats CNN among 18-29 year olds and 46-55 year olds, but CNN wins among those in the middle group (excluding here the major networks).

JUST ADDED -- a really good analysis of this poll by the ABC polling guy, Gary Langer, is here.  Worth the read.  He raises all kinds of points I wish I'd thought of, damn it.

Online Learning

Online learning of higher education (college) has increased 17 percent in a year, according to a new report.  I find this interesting for a number of reasons.  First, I teach at a traditional land grant university and second, I spend a lot of time online and thinking about how online will change journalism and what people know.  This study is about learning on demand, part of the larger entertainment on demand that the Internet has made so much a part of our lives.

People want it -- it being pretty much anything these days, from information to entertainment to pizza -- when they want it and not when we want to give it to them.  More and more, this will include education.

Earth Exploding?

My favorite quote so far this day.  Context: The National Enquirer of supermarket tabloid fame is submitting its John Edwards stories for a Pulitzer Prize.  Thus spoke the executive editor of that fine publication:

I think the members of the mainstream media would rather see the earth explode first than to reward us with a Pulitzer Prize. 

Yeah, that about sums it up.  Hell freezing over.  Earth exploding.  Glenn Beck awarded sainthood.  Any of these seem reasonable alternatives.

Census Redux

I discussed a few days ago a "census" document I received in the mail from the Republican Party.  Below is how the envelope looked:

Obviously misleading, suggesting that it was a Census document when really it is a mailing to people who have voted in the past for Republican candidates (yes, I have).  The survey itself is pretty much what you'd expect.  Below are small images of the four-page survey.  You can click on any page and see a better, but not great, image. 

In terms of quality -- setting aside the ethically-questionable and legally-tricky matter of posing as a real "census" in a Census year, the survey is okay.  I blogged before about Question 7 and how it collapses media and asks about "Internet Blogs" as if there are blogs other than on the Internet.  There are no questions that strike me as terribly loaded given the source of the survey.  You'd expect this point of view from one party about the other.  And of course the final page includes all the ways I can give money, if I so choose (er, I don't, thank you very much, given six days of furloughs by the State of Georgia).

Is it illegal to pose as a Census document?  Yes.  Does this violate the law?  Nah, probably not.  Sleazy, perhaps, but not illegal.

The entire questionnaire, for your enjoyment:

Wow

So I blogged a week or so ago about this semi-bogus "census" mailing I received that was really a survey by the Republican Party (yeah, I vote GOP sometimes, Democrat sometimes, I'm basically a radical moderate).

Someone on AAPORNet mentioned Friday a similar mailing and I posted the image of the one I received on the blog and pointed to it on the listserv.  Wow.  I just checked the Google Analytics for Friday and my number of hits for a given day increased 20-fold.  Freaked my analytics out.  Here's a map that shows where all the hits originated for that page.
Again, wow.  Too bad I didn't have Google Adsense turned on.  Might have made some money.

This is a good demonstration of the power of interconnectedness and networks.  If I'd put it on my Facebook and Twitter accounts as well, I might have generated even more traffic.

Hell Freezes Over

The National Enquirer as a Pulitzer Prize contender?  Yep, says Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post in today's column, for its groundbreaking coverage of the John Edwards mistress mess.  Ironic twist, this week Edwards admitted the woman's kid was his.  People were shocked!  shocked!

Is it a likely winner?  Hell might freeze over, but global warming will come to the rescue. 

The rag won't even earn a finalist spot, in part because of all the crud they run, in part for their reporting methods, in part because frankly this is not the kind of story that wins a Pulitzer.  Dick Cheney destroyed this guy ages ago in their VP debate.  The Enquirer was just piling on.

Knowledge about the Census

The fine folks at Pew have looked at what people know about the upcoming Census.  It's one of those good news-bad news results.  An early first blush at the findings includes the following:

The survey also probed knowledge of some basic facts about the census. Most Americans know that the census is used to decide states’ representation in Congress (64%) and that the census is not used to locate illegal immigrants so they can be arrested (68%). But just 31% know that participation in the census is required by law.

So fewer than a third realize that the law requires their participation, but the other two knowledge questions demonstrate pretty good numbers.