News Business Hit by More than Internet Disruption

Most observers would agree that the Internet is changing the news business much as television news and then cable news changed it in past years. "Audiences now consume news in new ways," says the 2009 "State of the News Media" report by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.

That isn't unusual. Many other businesses, including retailing, communications, music, video, marketing, advertising and ultimately even education face fundamental revenue challenges from the Internet and IP services.

The point is that the Internet and IP create new functional substitutes for older ways of doing things. "They hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media." the study says. And though revenue decline is most measurable evidence of decline, it might not be the only indicator of note.

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows, says the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

Just 29 percent of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63 percent say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55 percent said news stories were accurate while 34 percent said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26 percent) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60 percent who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20 percent) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21 percent) now also match all-time lows.

"Much of the growth in negative attitudes toward the news media over the last two years is driven by increasingly unfavorable evaluations by Democrats," the poll suggests. On several measures, Democratic criticism of the news media has grown by double-digits since 2007. Today, most Democrats (59 percent) say that the reports of news organizations are often inaccurate; just 43 percent said this two years ago.

Democrats are also now more likely than they were in 2007 to identify favoritism in the media: Two-thirds (67 percent) say the press tends to favor one side rather than to treat all sides fairly, up from 54 percent. And while just a third of Democrats (33 percent) say news organizations are “too critical of America,” that reflects a 10-point increase since 2007.

Readership, and hence revenue are dropping for obvious reasons: people get their news other ways. But perhaps newspaper readership also is down for less tangible reasons.