Americans still think the quantity of news-media coverage of the Clinton/Lewinsky story is out of whack, but last week’s semi-confession by the president has improved the public’s perception of the quality of that coverage.
According to a just-released survey by the respected Media Studies Center, 49 percent of the more than 1,000 Americans responding rated news coverage of the story as either excellent or good. In a survey done just after the story broke in January, just 36 percent said the coverage was either excellent or good.
The public’s confidence in the fairness of the coverage has also increased. In the new survey, 62 percent said coverage has been fair to Clinton (up from 54 percent in the previous survey), and 67 percent said it has been fair to Monica Lewinsky (up from 57 percent).
The survey also probed the public’s attitude toward the controversial issue of leaked information: 51 percent held independent counsel Ken Starr and his associates responsible for the most leaks, 20 percent fingered the president’s camp and 11 percent blamed both sides equally.
But 17 percent declined to offer an opinion on the subject, suggesting that media outlets are having at least some success in disguising the identity of their confidential sources.
The public also seems unimpressed with the opinions of actual and alleged political and legal experts. Among people who said they saw or heard analysis after the president’s Monday speech, 84 percent said it had no effect on their own opinions of the speech.
Americans still seem perturbed, however, by the sheer amount of coverage. Sixty-two percent said they think it’s getting more coverage than it deserves, about the same percentage as in the previous survey.
In addition, 62 percent said that news outlets had revealed too much information about the president’s private life, and roughly the same percentage (59 percent) said Starr’s investigation had probed the president’s private life too deeply. (Differences of less than six points are considered statistically insignificant.)