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Thursday, September 20, 2007
Poverty and the Media
Over a three year period (that included the Hurricane Katrina disaster), did the ABC nightly news run more stories about Michael Jackson or poverty?
If you guessed Michael Jackson, you'd be right. See FAIR's study on poverty stories on network news shows for more.
FAIR's study examined the three weeknight network newscasts—ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News—over a 38-month period (9/11/03— 10/30/06). We considered every story mentioning the words "poverty," "low income," "homeless," "welfare" or "food stamps," compiling a list of all stories that dealt with issues of poverty in more than a passing manner.
It was a short list. During the more than three years studied, there were just 58 stories about poverty on the three network newscasts, including just 191 quoted sources.
For perspective, a FAIR study of network newscasts (Extra!, 5—6/02) found that in just one year (2001), the three networks included a total of 14,632 sources. Assuming that the nightly news still features a like number of sources per year, that would amount to some 46,000 sources over the 38 months of FAIR's study, making sources appearing in poverty stories just 0.4 percent of overall sources.
This really is a problem. Studies have shown that the sheer quantity of media stories on poverty and inequality can have a significant affect on public opinion and policy preferences. When the media focus is elsewhere, raw trends in inequality and poverty generally don't have nearly as much impact on public perceptions these days.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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