Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
About this Survey Results for the main survey on Media Consumption are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 3,002 adults, 18 years of age or older, during the period April 24-May 11, 1998. For results based on the total sample, one can say […]
Public satisfaction with the state of the nation has lifted out of the doldrums of the early 1990s, with 46% today saying they are satisfied. While this is up 20% points or more from the period 1993 through mid-1996, half of all Americans (50%) still describe themselves as dissatisfied with the way things are going. […]
Budget Agreement Clearly, Bill Clinton’s continued high ratings, despite Whitewater and the DNC fund raising scandal, seem more tied to a reduction in economic anxiety than to success with the budget. News interest in the budget debate once again edged down at the very time the President and Republican leaders had come to their historic […]
Survey Findings An analysis of public attentiveness to more than 500 news stories over the last ten years confirms that the American public pays relatively little attention to many of the serious news stories of the day. The major exceptions to this rule are stories dealing with natural and man-made disasters and U.S. military actions. […]
About 12% of Americans go online to get information on current events, public issues and politics. On average, one third of these said they go online for news as many as three days a week. This level of online use has remained fairly stable across six studies completed by the Center this year. Compared to […]
Network TV News Credibility Slips In a separate survey by the Center, the public perception of the believability of two network news anchors eroded significantly, as did the believability of two news networks, compared to three years ago. Tom Brokaw, NBC News, and CBS News were the exceptions, experiencing only statistically insignificant decreases in this […]
Summary On the occasion of our transition from Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press to the Pew Research Center, we offer an overview of what we have learned during the past five years about the news stories that are followed closely by the public and how much Americans know about current events. […]