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'State of the Media: Network TV
Bud Ward

First the good news: About 83 percent of Americans get most of their news from television, about double the percentage that turns primarily to newspapers.

Now the bad news: Environmental stories comprise about one percent of stories on the network nightly news broadcasts -- about the same as education, transportation, and religion. "If you watched a commercial nightly newscast every weeknight for a month -- some 10 hours of programming -- you would have seen ... about four minutes on the environment." That's more air time on those programs than for culture and the arts or family and parenting ... but less than for the other news categories examined.

What's more, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) State of the News Media 2004 report, the three commercial networks' coverage of science has declined during the past two years, in part because of the increased coverage given foreign policy. Journalists doing environmental reporting on network TV find the media facing five "major trends," the report says:

• shrinking audiences;
• declining news budgets;
• competition from 24-hour cable news;
• the rapid growth followed by the decline of prime time news magazine shows; and
• increased influence of lighter-fare morning programs within news divisions.

The Dan Rather/Tom Brokaw/Peter Jennings nightly network newscasts are "still the place where viewers can get the most comprehensive sense of the day's events," the report says. But "morning news programs have become clearly more important to network news divisions." Those shows focus more on crime, less on governmental affairs or foreign events, and substantially more on celebrities and lifestyle news.

Writing of the morning network news programs, the report says, "It is a world where the economy is covered as household finance tips; where science is covered as innovations in personal health or consumer electronics; and where environmental stories such as global warming are covered as the latest weather disaster."

Not only has the environmental news hole narrowed on the networks, but the news hole generally is much smaller: 18 minutes and 48 seconds now compared with 22 minutes in earlier 30-minute programs. Even that reduced air time for news content is more than for the morning news programs, which average just slightly more than 15 minutes in 30 once commercials, promotional announcements and teases, and local news are accounted for.