Editors judgments about if, how and where to play those stories must be made carefully and knowing that they will probably have had heavy TV coverage. Another, perhaps more insidious, contributor to these beliefs is the perception that newspapers overplay normal news stories 48 percent of adults say they find misleading headlines in their paper more than once a week and the related fear expressed by 78 percent that journalists enjoy reporting on the personal failings of officials. The gap between the amount of coverage of the Clinton sex scandal and the public s interest in it underscores the problem. 67 percent said they were not at all interested in the story. 54 percent report that newspapers are their primary source of this news.
Television is seen as the dominant source of national and world news.
Television is accepted as the news medium that gets it first. Newspaper editors need to seriously examine the amount of energy and space spent on the sensational stories that the public doesn t want, resources that could, perhaps, be better redirected toward giving them what they do want.