Natural Disaster News Is Popular With Readers p. 16

By: Debra Gersh Hernandez

Times Mirror Center survey shows high levels of interest in
earthquake coverage; majority says Bobbitt case overcovered sp.

NATURAL DISASTERS TEND to receive high levels of reader interest, as measured in the regular surveys of the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press, and the recent earthquake in Southern California was no exception.
Sixty-three percent of respondents said they very closely followed news of the earthquake in January, while slightly more than half (51%) very closely followed reports about the bitterly cold weather in the Northeast and Midwest during the same period, according to the latest Times Mirror News Interest Index.
Coverage of the earthquake earned high ratings as good (53%) or excellent (33%). Few respondents labeled it poor (3%) or only fair (11%).
Reports on the cold weather blanketing portions of the country received very high marks, with 45% of respondents saying it was excellent, 44% calling it good, 6% saying it was only fair and 2% thinking it was poor.
News of the attack on Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was followed very closely by 45% of the public, and in fact, that drama barely was edged out by the earthquake as the single story most closely followed (23% to 21%). Nevertheless, 27% of respondents said the Kerrigan story was overcovered.
News reports about the attack on the skater at the national championships in Detroit were rated good by nearly half of the respondents (47%) and excellent by almost another third (31%). Six percent said the coverage was poor, and 14% ranked it as only fair.
The percentage of respondents very closely following reports about the Clinton administration's health care reform plan fell slightly to 38% from the 40% reported near the end of 1993.
Health care reporting also earned fairly high marks, with 43% calling it good, 11% excellent, 36% only fair and 10% poor.
Reports about the U.S. economy showed a similar slight decline in interest, with 34% following the story very closely in January, compared with 36% in December.
As many people (26%) very closely followed President Clinton's State of the Union address as very closely followed the trial of Lorena Bobbitt, who was accused of cutting off her husband's penis in Virginia.
However, more people paid less attention to Clinton, with 31% saying they "not at all closely" followed the State of the Union address and 15% saying the same about the Bobbitt
trial.
Slightly more than half (51%), though, said the Bobbitt case received too much coverage.
More respondents thought the Bobbitt coverage was good (41%) than excellent (31%), only fair (17%) or poor (11%).
The investigation of the Clintons' investments in Whitewater Land Development Corp. was very closely followed by 14% and fairly closely followed by 25% of respondents.
Among that 39%, 42% said the press was most responsible for making Whitewater an issue, and 47% pointed to Clinton's political opponents.
Still, 63% of those who followed the story very or fairly closely said it is important for the press to try hard to learn the facts in the case. About a third (34%) said the press was pushing too hard.
Each capturing the very close attention of only 12% of the public were the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the trial of brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez, who are accused of murdering their parents in California.
Clinton's summit meetings tend to score low in public interest, and his most recent ones in Europe and Russia followed suit, with only 11% of the public very closely watching. His summit meeting with Asian leaders in Seattle in December was very closely followed by only 7% of respondents.
Columnists William Safire, Anthony Lewis and Ellen Goodman can rest easy. The least closely followed news story in January was the withdrawal of retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman as nominee for secretary of defense. Inman cited the three's columns among his reasons for withdrawing.
Seven percent of respondents said they very closely followed the Inman story, and 44% said they followed it not at all closely.
Almost six in 10 (58%), however, said Inman's accusations of media criticism and hostility were true but exaggerated.
Seventeen percent said his charges were completely true, and 21% thought they were not true.
Most respondents (56%) said the personal and ethical behavior of politicians is covered fairly responsibly by the press.
Thirteen percent said coverage is very responsible, 22% said it is not very responsible and 7% responded that such coverage is done not at all responsibly.
Despite the general belief that it is at least fairly responsible, 59% of respondents said the coverage of personal and ethical behavior of politicians is excessive; 38% said it is not.
Half of the respondents (51%) said they think press coverage of personal and ethical behavior of politicians does not help weed out people who should not be in office.
A close 45% said they think such coverage does help screen out these politicians.
But the belief that too many qualified people are reluctant to run for public office was seen as a far bigger problem by respondents (64%) than corrupt politicians not being weeded out (31%).
Generally, 66% of the public believes that criticism by news organizations keeps political leaders from doing things that should not be done, while only a quarter (24%) said press criticism keeps political leaders from doing their jobs.
The press was named by 43% of respondents as the group playing the most influential role in determining which issues and events are considered important. Political leaders in Washington were a distant second, chosen by 22%, followed by business leaders (11%), Hollywood (10%) and religious leaders (7%).
In addition, 64% said the press accurately reflects the amount of crime in this country, while 28% said crime is exaggerated.


amending the system.
"If the industry says it wants the system to do this or that, I don't think it's our place to say no. As a cooperative . . . if your owners tell you to do something, you should figure out a way to do it."
Pricing of the system has not been finalized, but "our current thinking is that the advertiser pays [for the service]," Blasko said.
He added that the cost will be competitive with "the range of pricing that is now used . . . ."
Blasko said that ultimately, the system will benefit the industry as a whole.
"If we can get advertising, news- papering and the transmission [people] in the same room and keep them talking, we can probably come up with something good because we all have the same goal: to get the ad in the newspaper."
Other companies that offer digital or facsimile ad transmission, such as Ad/Sat Inc. in New York and DigiFlex in Culver City, Calif., are sure to watch development of the AP system.
"For us, the bottom line is whether there is going to be a level playing field in terms of access to AP's telecommunications network on the same cost basis as AP would be using the network," said Dick Atkins, president and CEO of Ad/Sat, referring to the AP satellite link to newspapers through which all digital transmission is received.
Ad/Sat offers digital ad transmission as well as high-definition facsimile transmission. Ad/Sat currently uses PostScript and will test Acrobat, Atkins added.
E.J. Dieckman, president of DigiFlex, said, "Our concern would be more from a marketing point of view rather than technology since we don't use satellite."
DigiFlex is all digital and transmits material via a fiber-optic digital network.
"Obviously, when three people are knocking on the ad manager's door selling ad delivery and only one can get the budget that's been allocated, having a fourth or fifth or sixth person in the marketplace muddies the waters more for all of us," Dieckman said.
However, he added, "Anything that AP does to further electronic ad delivery or graphic delivery is good for everybody in the market."