Don’t over-react; do research

“OPINION WRITERS blamed for Noy rating dip,” was the head of a recent news item quoting presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda thus: “We don’t have any problem with the Malacañang Press Corps. There’s no problem with the news itself but perhaps with the columnists who are always criticizing him.”

That quotation tells me that Lacierda (a) sees a problem, and (b) blames it on unfriendly columnists. On both matters, I beg to disagree.

In the first place, the change in the administration’s margin of support from +64 in November 2010 to +46 in March 2011 is not a problem. I explained why in my last column, “The honeymoon isn’t over yet,” by reviewing the margins of support of all previous administrations at all times, including their own honeymoons.

Let’s try other explanations. If this were a basketball playoff series, it would be like winning the first two games by 64 points each, and then being downcast for winning the third game by “only” 46 points—forgetting that the victory margin in all previous seasons (i.e., all previous administrations) never exceeded 34 points in any game. Or, if this were about buying a new car, it would be like griping about the discount on resale value of driving it out of the dealership.

In the second place, there simply aren’t enough Filipinos who read newspapers, for anything they print (and not only the unfriendly columns) to be able to swing nine points from the satisfied to the dissatisfied, and thus account for an 18-point fall in the margin.

Statistics on newspaper readership are available from various sources. According to the SWS November 2010 national survey, 6 percent of adult Filipinos read a newspaper every day, 5 percent read a paper a few times a week, and 6 percent read a paper weekly. Thus only 17 percent read a newspaper even as much as once a week. On the other hand, 67 percent read one just occasionally, and 15 percent never read a newspaper.

In Metro Manila, only 16 percent read a newspaper every day. Among college graduates nationwide, the percentage is 18. Among the middle-to-upper ABC classes nationwide, the percentage is only 10. These three demographic groups are, by tradition, relatively less satisfied with any current administration, probably because they have higher expectations or standards. But they are too small to determine the national score.

From the few who read newspapers, there would be fewer who read the columns, even fewer who read the unfriendly columns, and fewer yet who do not read the friendly, or at least fair, columns also. How many readers are in these categories, I do not know. Surely some readers of columnists are less influenced by columns than by the objective news. My point is simply that the influence of columnists, unfriendly or not, on the general public is easily exaggerated.

The straightforward way to gauge the influence of media on public opinion is to regularly quantify news reporting and/or opinion writing over time, and to look for correlations between them and the trends in scientific opinion polls. I have come across such studies in conferences of the American Association for Public Opinion Research; try googling its journal, Public Opinion Quarterly.

Certain newspapers, like the New York Times or Washington Post, are indexed according to their reporting on given topics. The measurements are done in terms of both quantity (for example, column inches devoted to a topic) and tone (for example, favorable to the current administration, unfavorable to the current administration, or neutral). Then statistical tests are done to look for relationships of the newspaper reports to public opinion as depicted by polls.

Such research is done by academic centers that specialize in mass communication. Surely, the general principles are applicable for studying the relationship of public opinion to the work of newspaper columnists as well. It would call for indexing the output of columnists, likewise in quantity and in tone.

The studies should be designed to separate the influences of the objective news reports and of the columns. It would be nice for the statistical samples to be capable of separating news readers only, column readers only, and readers of both news and columns. It would be nice to know which people in the data samples read which columns. Do readers get dissatisfied with the government from reading unfriendly columns, or do they become fans of unfriendly columnists out of dissatisfaction with the government? The “which way does the relationship go” issue is standard fare in social science research.

What actually makes columnists, of any leaning, more potent is the ability of some to influence the broadcast media, if not to become broadcast journalists (and thereby even elected to political office, in due time!) themselves. This is because the broadcast audience is much larger than the print audience.

Also from the SWS November 2010 survey, the size of the national adult radio audience is as follows: 15 percent listen for three or more hours a day; 14 percent, for one or two hours a day; 8 percent, for less than an hour a day; 10 percent, for a few days per week; 50 percent, seldom; and 3 percent, never.

But topping them all is the national adult television audience: 41 percent watch TV for three or more hours a day; 24 percent, for one or two hours a day; 11 percent, for less than an hour a day; 7 percent, for a few days per week; 16 percent, seldom; and 0.5 percent, never.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or [email protected].