Television News Serving Up More Opinion Less News—Especially MSNBC
Says the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2013 report:
CNN, which has branded itself around reporting resources and reach, cut back between 2007 and 2012 on two areas tied to that brand—in-depth story packages and live event coverage. Even so, CNN is the only one of the three big cable news channels to produce more straight reporting than commentary over all. At the other end of that spectrum lies MSNBC, where opinion fills a full 85% of the channel’s airtime.
According to the survey, the balance for Fox News was 55 percent commentary/opinion and 45 percent factual reporting. [“The Changing TV News Landscape,” by Mark Jurkowitz et al., in The State of the News Media 2013,” Pew Research Center, March 18, 2013]
