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AU Establishes MA Program in Political Communication

The School of Communication at American University in partnership with the School of Public Affairs has established a new 2 year MA degree program in Political Communication. The program is currently accepting applications for Fall 2010. Follow this link and see details posted below. The joint SOC/SPA degree is one of several new programs moving forward at AU, as the university and School of Communication pursue an ambitious new strategic plan. The Master of Arts in Political Communication is a 36 credit hour degree program combining education in political sciences and communication,…

AAAS Conference on "Climate Literacy and Informal Learning"

In the two days leading up to their annual conference in San Diego later this month, AAAS will be sponsoring a two-day workshop on improving climate change literacy through informal education activities. I will be participating in one of the panels and I hope to be blogging summaries of the event. Below is a description of the special invitation only conference and go here for an agenda. More than 150 educators from informal science institutions and projects--including science centers, museums, zoos, and aquariums; media projects; and community programs--will gather in San Diego to expand…

Silence Is the Enemy: Commonly Appearing News Frames of Sexual Violence

Several science bloggers this month are spotlighting sexual violence as a social problem and the Scienceblogs portal has jumped on board. The focus is mostly on international cases but it's important to also think about how sexual violence is framed and addressed here in the U.S. This past semester, Katherine Broendel, one of my graduate students here at AU, reviewed studies of how sexual violence is framed in news coverage and public discourse, synthesizing this research to come up with a generalizable typology of commonly appearing frames and interpretations. These frames are important…

The Science Behind Dan Brown's Angels and Demons

On the road giving talks this spring and in several forthcoming articles, I recommend that one way to widen the net in terms of public engagement is to hook science around entertainment media. A leading initiative I spotlight is the National Academies' Science & Entertainment Exchange which pairs scientists with TV and film producers. A recent success was the incidental news coverage generated by scientific consultation on the movie-version of The Watchmen. This week comes another great strategy for "going broad" with science communication. As the NSF spotlights, more than 45 lectures are…

Words of Advice for Atheist Literalists (and Many Bloggers)

For more than a decade, Rick Weiss covered science (and its politics) for the Washington Post. When he left the paper last year, the news organization lost one of the top two or three science journalists in the business and perhaps the very best at covering the intersections of biomedical research and policy. Weiss now serves as a fellow at the Center for American Progress, contributing articles to the think tank's Science Progress site. In today's Washington Post, Weiss pens a guest op-ed weighing in on the continued culture war over evolution. While Darwin himself never took his findings as…

At Nature Nanotechnology, Implications for Re-Thinking Science Communication

The University of Wisconsin news office has posted a valuable Q&A with my friend and UW professor Dietram Scheufele. The occasion is a new study he has published with colleagues at Nature Nanotechnology, examining the relationship between the social background of audiences and their views on the moral acceptability of nanotechnology, comparing perceptions in the US to Europe. The interview hits closely on some of the major themes Scheufele and I cover in a manuscript that provides a big picture view on new directions in science communication. Here's a key excerpt from the interview: WW…

The heroic Andy Wakefield

The New York Times has a long profile of Andrew Wakefield. It's not at all laudatory (read the last paragraph in particular), but it does include quotes from people who regard Wakefield as a hero…and even something more. "To our community, Andrew Wakefield is Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one," says J. B. Handley, co-founder of Generation Rescue, a group that disputes vaccine safety. "He's a symbol of how all of us feel." Handley, of course, is a certifiable kook and an awful excuse for a human being. I am amused that he sees Wakefield as a Jesus, though; there doesn't seem…

Book Chapter on the Framing Science Debate

I recently submitted a final draft of a book chapter that reviews much of the research that has fueled the framing science debate. The chapter is set to appear in early 2008 in a volume titled New Agendas in Science Communication, published by Taylor & Francis and edited by JoAnn Kahlor and Patricia Stout at the University of Texas. You can read a PDF of the final draft here. In the chapter, I synthesize the findings and conclusions from many previously published studies and articles. Detailing the specific cases of nuclear energy, evolution, and climate change, I demonstrate the…

Measuring the Impact of Michael Moore's SICKO

As I have mentioned here before, one of the studies I am working on evaluates the impact of documentary film across audiences, news coverage, and policy contexts. I have written short introductions or columns on this topic in the past with a focus on Inconvenient Truth. While searching around for additional data, I ran across this survey report from Kaiser on the impact of Michael Moore's SICKO. If the potential impact of Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" were dependent solely on those who have actually seen the film, the result might be a passionate but narrow conversation among the 4%…

So how sophisticated are video games these days? Words from EA's Henry LaBounta

I just noticed talks are up from the TEDxVancouver event I attended a little while back. At the time, I mainly focused on one particular speaker who was a Climate Change denialist, but now that the talks are up, I thought it fitting to highlight what I thought was one of the strongest talk (sort of the one where folks kind of went, "whoa - that's cool"). Of course, this had to do with video games, specifically a show and tell of some of the remarkable software mechanics behind the sport game titles produced by Electronic Arts. Anyway, the fellow talking is one Henry LaBounta, who happens…

Manufactured Landscapes: A haunting and beautiful look at the terrain we humans create.

Science Scout twitter feed Recently, I heard of a new documentary called "Act of God" by Jennifer Baichwal, that involved looking at individuals struck by lightning. I haven't had a chance to check out this new film, but it did remind me of a previous movie that she had done called "Manufactured Landscapes," which highlighted the remarkable photography of Edward Burtynsky. And whilst thinking about this, I've stumbled across Edward's great website which has some of the most striking imagery I've seen in a long time (Click on the images to get to a larger version and title on Edward's…

My collection of New Yorker rejection letters. It's like you can actually watch evolution take place.

(Given it being a big week for Darwin and all, I thought it would be kind of cool to repost this post from 07) Not counting Shouts and Murmurs email queries, I've sent pieces to the New Yorker proper on three occasions, the last of which just a few months ago. What I've noticed is that there is a clear trend is how these rejection letters have been developing over the years. Here's the first one I got, which I think is pretty impressive and earned a rating of "A" in a previous post. I mean, it's got it all. Handwritten, reference to a powerful editor at the top of his game, written and…

Trees and the Depths of Nature (Landscape and Modernity: Series 4)

The Morning News has another stunning series of landscape photographs on display and another chance to reflect on the intersection of landscapes, nature, and technology. It's possible that each of those words should be in quotes--one point brought up by previous commenters in this Landscape and Modernity Series (the West; the pasture; the A-bomb) --to suggest better the implications of defining them. Perhaps so. Myoung Ho Lee: Tree # 3, Archival Ink-jet print on paper, 100x80cm, 2006 These images are by Myoung Ho Lee, whose work you can find and purchase at Lens Culture. Mike Smith, who…

Science Showdown Highlight Reel: Early Play from the Physics Region

PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIV What began as a field of 64 highly competitive teams has ended with just Darwin and HIV. With the tournament's Final game currently underway, we look back on a Science Showdown like no other. Some of the best play in the early rounds came from the Physics, or Orbit, Region. Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Principles, caught all the action. It all began with this... Anchor 1 (voiceover): The Showdown begins! Four regions, eight games each, sixty-four top science concepts in a fight to the finish. Anchor 2: In today's Orbit region…

A paradigm shift: the role of storytelling in the pursuit of understanding things like global issues?

I just wanted to highlight this excellent post by a student who use to work with me on the Terry project. Basically, Shagufta begins: Political science is not the only way to understand the world. It seems like a simple statement, but when I first entered the Faculty of Arts I was surprised how many students grimaced when they heard the word science. As a former life sciences student, this distressed me. It continues where eventually, you realize that the point of the post, is to seek opinion of whether creative literature should have a more prominent role in looking into globally relevant…

Looking for an excuse to come to Vancouver? Take my workshop!

Specific details are here, but basically, my facility is hosting two workshops for the scientific community (around the latter half of February 2008). One is a 5 day session that focuses on a myriad of molecular techniques, and incorporates both a practical hands-on portion, as well as the all important biochemical (as in what the hell is going on?) angle. Not to toot our own horns, but we've garnered consistently excellent reviews, and I would say that if you're the practicing scientist (and on occasion engineer, statistician, computer scientist, lawyer) who wants a course to get up to…

Funny Psychology Dictionary

This is pretty funny. Check out Dr. Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology. Some of my favorites: Evolutionary Psychology: A branch of psychology, unwittingly inspired by Charles Darwin and Rudyard Kipling, that describes how we behave through made up stores that guess why we had to behave. In this case, the stories are about what traits our ancestors had to evolve 250,000 years ago to survive. At that time, Mother Nature or evolution was especially demanding, and selected those behavioral traits that permitted survival, much like a mom selects out table manners in her kids. Since all the…

Damn you mouse!

This is from the Onion: University of Iowa neuroscientists studying spatial learning and the effects of stress on memory announced Tuesday that a little son-of-a-bitch mouse ruined an experiment on cognitive performance by effortlessly navigating a maze that researchers spent nearly a year designing and constructing. The test subject, a common house mouse, briskly traversed the complicated wooden maze in under 30 seconds or, according to the study's final report, roughly 1/8,789,258 as long as it took the lab to secure funding for the experiment. According to researchers administrating the…

Playing hookie at the FIRST Robotics Competition

I didn't have much to do this afternoon, so I played hookie and went down to the FIRST Robotics Competition. The competition pits bands of high school students (and their engineer/mentors) in a contest to see who can build the best robot for an assigned task. At the moment the local competition (the national competition is in Georgia, I think) is going on in the Javits center in Manhattan. This convention is a true festivus of geekiness. I kid you not: I have never seen such a raucous bunch of robotics nerds in my life. It was like the party scene from Real Genius. At one point the…

Say It Ain't So: Beer Consumption Lowers Scientific Productivity

I refuse to accept the results of this study: After years of argument over the roles of factors like genius, sex and dumb luck, a new study shows that something entirely unexpected and considerably sudsier may be at play in determining the success or failure of scientists -- beer. According to the study, published in February in Oikos, a highly respected scientific journal, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher, a measure of a paper's quality and importance. The results were not, however, a matter…

Farcically Bad Orange Juice Commercial

I don't know if you have seen these, but Florida Orange Juice started a new ad campaign featuring commercials with the voice of Tom Selleck. (Magnum PI does like his orange juice.) Anyway, the commercials show a beaker into which is being poured OJ. Tom Selleck then proceeds to say: "Food scientists have spent years with their beakers and flasks and chemistry sets, trying to come up with something as good for you as Florida orange juice," says Selleck's deep baritone. "But they've never come close. Start your day with almost 25 percent of your daily recommended fruit and vegetable servings…

Friday Rants: I hate these TV ads

I hate you IO Digital Cable. I haven't the foggiest idea where you are or what you sell but I hate you. I hate you because of this commercial (see below fold) which has been running on a continuous loop on cable and has now been shown 4,000,000,000 times in NYC alone. (Picture of Angry Crab by Ryan Harvey on Flickr) That is the most horrible advertising jingle I have ever heard. It calls to me in my sleep; I can't get the damn thing out of my brain. It tries so hard to be "cool and hip with the youngsters" that I want to slam my head against the wall until I pass out. Further, every…

Atheist Sunday School?

This is just lame. Atheist parents in Palo Alto have set up an atheist Sunday school: The Palo Alto Sunday family program uses music, art and discussion to encourage personal expression, intellectual curiosity and collaboration. One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like I'm Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians, instead of traditional Sunday-school songs like Jesus Loves Me. Rather than listen to a Bible story, the class read Stone Soup, a secular parable of a…

When did the Onion get so funny?

I don't remember the last time I found two Onion articles funny in the same calendar year. Here is another one: "If you're looking for some button-down traditionalist who relies on so-called induction, conventional logic, and verification to arrive at what the scientific community calls 'proof,' then I'm afraid you've got the wrong guy," said the intrepid 44-year-old rebel, who last month unveiled a revolutionary new model of atomic structure that contradicted 300 years of precedent. "But if you want your results fast and with some flair, then come with me and I'll prove that the boiling…

Onion: Congress to Fund Expensive Science Thing

I don't catch the Onion much anymore, but this is just priceless: Top physicists from several major American universities appeared before a Congressional committee Monday to request $50 billion for a science thing that would further U.S. advancement science-wise and broaden human knowing. The scientists spoke for approximately three hours about the complicated science machine, which is expensive, and large, telling members of the House Committee on Science and Technology that the tubular, gamma-ray-using mechanism is vital in some big way. Yet the high price tag of the thing, which would be…

Who says you can't watch evolution?

Scientists have just documented (another) inheritable change in a species that occurred in response to a change in the environment -- in this case a parasite. Hence they have observed the process of natural selection. In the latest issue of Science, Charlat et al. observed that the sex ratio in a species of Polynesian butterfly -- Hypolimnas bolina -- changed from 99:1 favoring females to parity in less than 10 generations. The sex ratio favored females because there is a parasite -- a bacteria called Wolbachia -- that selectively kills the male embryos. However, in the space of ten…

Designing Darwin

DESIGNING DARWIN - Prize competition Organized by the British Society for the History of Science Outreach & Education Committee The year 2009 sees both the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth (on 12th February) and the 150th birthday of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species. In anticipation of the celebrations, the BSHS Outreach & Education Committee is offering prizes for original designs that best illustrate the significance of either (or both) of these anniversaries. Format of the entry: entries may submitted in one of the following electronic formats: A poster up to…

Just reminiscing about computers

Over at Page 3.14, there’s a post where us old farts reminisce about computing when we were young ’uns. I’m quoted as saying "My first computer was a ZX81 (Timex/Sinclair here in the US). Had 1k of memory. Taught myself assembly. In high school and college, virtually everything was hand written. Didn’t even use a calculator until college (wasn’t allowed in high school - I remember log tables!)" Below the fold, I give some more reminiscences. Gentle reader, feel free to add your memories as comments. These are somewhat free-form and disjointed ... My first computer was a ZX81 (Timex/…

Networking is good

I feel a little bit guilty saying this: every time I write about Jonah Lehrer, it seems to be about jumping on his ideas, even though I think he's a good writer and his other ideas, the ones I don't carp about, are interesting. The last time was when I criticized his noise about how science is falling, and now he's gotten on the "The internet is making us stupider" bandwagon. I think it is a silly argument; it's essentially saying that making the exchange of ideas more free leads to greater ignorance about the diversity of opinions out there. It's just not true. I'm an admitted lefty liberal…

Ain't no heaven, ain't no afterlife of any kind, either, say the physicists

Hasn't Sean Carroll learned from Stephen Hawking's experience? Nothing stirs up the public like a physicist explaining how silly their cherished myths are. Now Carroll gives the physicists' perspective on life after death. Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only…

Orr on Dennett on Orr on Dawkins

H. Allen Orr responds to Dennett's response to Orr's review of Dawkins' The God Delusion and basically captures my position on TGD: Daniel Dennett's main complaint about my review is that I held Dawkins's book to too high a standard. The God Delusion was, he says, a popular work and, as such, one can't expect it to grapple seriously with religious thought. There are two things wrong with this objection. The first is that the mere fact that a book is intended for a broad audience doesn't mean its author can ignore the best thinking on a subject. Indeed it's precisely the task of the…

In the end times everything will burn up ... even Frosty

Apparently a YEC named "Frosty" trumps the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences every time. "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD." (…

On Atheists, Agnostics and Dawkins

Friend Fruit asks: Has any of those people [Ed mentioned], Dawkins, Myers, et. al. advocated the elimination of religion and religious believers by stoning, disembowlment, burning at the stake, or other forms of auto de fe? I do agree that perhaps Ed's original phrasing is a little inflammatory and should perhaps have read "religion itself, in any form, is to be attacked and destroyed." However, that doesn't alter Ed's essential point. Those of us who have been working to fight anti-evolutionism have all seen this schism occur in various groups - a schism between moderates (whom people like…

The Wit and Wisdom Lives On

With little Ricky Santorum (BA, MBA, JD) heading off into the sunset, it is difficult to forget what a great philosopher of science and education he was. Here, therefore, are some of his greatest hits: "Therefore, intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." 2002 Washington Times op-ed article (source) "[M]ainstream science does not simply "discover the truth"; instead it relies in part on a set of unscientific, false philosophical presuppositions as the basis for many of its conclusions. Thus, crucial aspects of what modern science teaches…

Texas, again

That place is just a magnet for nuts. There is going to be a review of the science curriculum next month, and the creationists on the state board of education are gearing up by appointing more creationists to staff the panels. Furthermore, they're gathering specific curriculum materials, and skewing them towards lunacy. One submission has come from a company called International Databases, LLC. It's a one-man operation run by Stephen Sample, who says he has a degree in evolutionary biology and taught at the high school and junior college levels for 15 years. The material he submitted…

Love selects ...

It appears that now, even the Joyce scholars think they know biology. From the recent edition of The New York Review: If we turn now to Darwinian theory itself, which purports to explain these discoveries and which is taught in most schools and colleges in the developed world, we find that it is based on, as Darwin puts it, "the unguided processes of random variation and natural selection." Take the first part: random variation. By random is meant, presumably, accidental, and clearly accidents do happen, but there is no scientific evidence to the effect that the transformations that took…

"You tell him to give his heart to Jesus."

I was going to post earlier on a New York Times article that discusses the harrassment that a Jewish family has recieved for asking that prayers at school events be made more generic and less Christian, but PZ beat me to it. I will highlight this part however: A homemaker active in her children's schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read "Jesus Saves," she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In…

The Office Candy Dish: We Eat It Because Its There

A short communication in the International Journal of Obesity caught my eye this morning. A research group from Cornell explored some seemingly-obvious questions: Do people eat food just because its there, and will they eat more if the food is close in proximity and unlimited in supply? And one not so obvious: Do we underestimate how much we eat when the food is closer (the idle munching effect)? (More below the fold!) The team recorded the chocolate consuption of 40 adult secretaries for 4 weeks. They manipulated proximity by placing the chocolates on the desk of the participant or 2 meters…

Must Read Article on the Limits of Brain Scans

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, has a great article in Scientific American about the limits of interpreting fMRI scanning studies -- particularly how they are presented in the media. The biggest point is that the brain is not a collection of modules isolated from one another; rather, it is a collection of interconnected systems with diverse roles in diverse tasks: A number of interconnected neural networks may in some cases be localized and bundled into modulelike units, but in most ways they are better described as being splayed out over, under or through the brain's crevasses…

Clever idea: Congestion pricing for parking spaces

Here is a clever idea for making sure you never have to search for a parking space: congestion pricing. San Francisco is trying out a system based on this principle: The SFpark project will begin early in 2009 with a new network of pavement sensors in 6,000 of San Francisco's metered parking spaces and 11,500 of its off-street car parks and garages. These sensors will detect when a space is taken and relay that information to a central database. From there, information about vacant parking spots will pass to drivers in several ways. The most basic will be through a network of road signs that…

Possible Repercussions of Banning Bushmeat

A recent report questions the wisdom of an outright ban on bushmeat sales: The report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, Indonesia, suggests instead that the bushmeat trade should be regulated, with hunting allowed for relatively common, fast-reproducing species such as duikers (a small antelope) and rodents, whereas endangered species, such as primates, should continue to be protected. CIFOR is one of 15 international research centres funded by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research -- a partnership of governments,…

Effeminate Semicolons

This is funny. Andrew Sullivan has a discussion going on whether the use of semicolons is (ahem) gay. It references an article in the Boston Globe documenting a variety of semicolon-haters. But here is the best comment from Bryan Appleyard: Lately, with considerable effort, I have begin to use them with some frequency; they seem to come almost naturally at last. Yet I still fear Kurt Vonnegut's description of them as 'transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing' as well as the charge that real men neither eat quiche nor use semi-colons. In the end, however, the semi-colon…

Elephants Steer Clear of Landmines

Elephants migrating into Angola seem to have learned how to avoid land mines, according to an article in National Geographic. During Angola's long and gruesome civil war, thousands of elephants were slaughtered. Since peace has returned, so have the pachyderms. Specifically, the elephants are making their way back to the Luiana Partial Reserve in the Cuando Cubango province. When they first began their migration, scores of elephants had their legs and trunks "blown off" by such mines, causing long, painful deaths. Quoted in the article however, Michael Chase, the head of Elephants Without…

Endangered Sea Lions Develop Taste for Rare Penguin

A species of endangered sea lion has suddenly acquired a taste for a rare penguin in New Zealand, causing heated debate amongst Kiwi conservationists and scientists. Sea lions breeding on the Otago Peninsula have taken to devouring yellow-eyed penguins. The good news is that male sea lions do not seem to have a pallet for the birds. The bad news is that female sea lions may eat up to thirty yellow-eyed penguins per year a piece. Scientists from the New Zealand Department of Conservation are trying to set up a breeding ground for the sea lions on the Otago Peninsula. Succeeding means having…

Nature Nanotech Editor on Framing as the New Communication Paradigm

Artist rendition of nanobot assisting in reproduction. As I highlighted last week, in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology my colleague Dietram Scheufele is the lead author on a survey analysis that finds that experts are more concerned about the health and environmental risks of nanotech than the public at large. In the editorial to the issue, Nature Nanotech editor Peter Rodgers emphasizes the importance of turning to communication researchers for help in engaging the public on the many technical, social, and political dimensions of nanotech. He specifically cites our Policy Forum…

Only 24% of Republicans Believe Gore Deserves Nobel

In the United States, when it comes to public perceptions of Gore's climate message and Nobel award, partisanship is serving as the strongest of perceptual screens, triggered in part by the chorus of conservative media attacking Gore's accomplishments and challenging the science behind his claims. Consider the clip above from Fox News Sunday. In the roundtable discussion, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol leads by deriding Gore for "bloviating" about climate change while people die in Iraq and Burma. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthamer adopts the now familiar talking points,…

Over the past 20 yrs, the proportion of the public paying 'very close attention' to news coverage about science and technology has dropped 50%

Pew has released an extensive analysis by political scientist Michael Robinson of three decades of its news consumption data. Among the key findings, since the 1980s, the percentage of the public who say they follow news about science and technology "very closely" has dropped by half, from roughly 30% during the 1980s to roughly 15% today. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who say they follow personalities and entertainment has doubled to 17%, while the proportion paying very close attention to terrorism/war; bad weather; and money top all issues, with each at 40% respectively. In a…

Romney invests personal fortune in embryonic stem cell research; casinos, and Sudanese oil partners

As I've observed before, with this election cycle's crop of GOP candidates, when general election time arrives, it's going to be difficult to employ the traditional Republican strategy of claiming that the Democratic rival is a "flip flopper." A leading example is Mitt Romney. First the former MA Governor was for stem cell research and now he's against it. Yet despite his new found moral opposition, as the Washington Post reports today, Romney continues to invest his personal fortune, managed via a "blind trust," in a company that is a leader in embryonic stem cell research. He also…

Giuliani's Low Information Signals

In the 2004 election, the great majority of voters didn't deliberate the specific policy positions of the candidates and then make an informed choice. Instead, in order to make up their minds, the miserly public relied heavily on "low information signals" such as likability and perceived character. In their analysis of the election, James Carville and Paul Begala conclude that the Bush team correctly realized that a few themes could frame the election in their favor. The central themes went something like this: If he doesn't live your life, share your values, or is someone you would want to…

A Two Americas of Cable TV Viewers

In new survey released by Pew, Americans see few ideological differences among the three broadcast TV news networks, but among regular viewers of cable TV news, content differences are readily apparent, and these perceptions flow heavily from partisanship. In general, the public sees few differences among the three broadcast networks. Fully 74% say ABC News, CBS News and NBC News are all pretty much the same. Only 18% say there are real differences between the three. But impressions of the three major cable news networks differ substantially. While 40% of the public says CNN, the Fox News…