정부 정책에 관한 종합 일간지 여론조사 보도기사에 대한 콘텐츠분석(1997~2006)

Abstract

Journalism scholars and research experts have criticized media news and reports on opinion surveys in elections as they have been found to lack seriously in terms of reliability and objectivity of the news content. Although, news articles on government policies and national issues have sharply increased from the mid-90's, those articles present more of the same problems as in the news reporting on the election poll surveys. The purpose of this study is to find out, first, the types and characteristics of newspaper articles that report public opinion survey results on government policies and national issues in various key ares and, second, to evaluate how well the reliability and objectivity of the articles are observed in reporting the survey results. The content analysis method is used to achieve the research goals, and all articles in 6 national dailies during the period of 1997 through 2006 were collected for the content analysis. Articles with election polls data are not included in the study. As results, the number of the relevant articles markedly increased overall, particularly in the fields of economy, education, government policy and culture, but the reliability and objectivity of the reports do not seem to have much improved. It is suggested that we call journalists' attention to the significance of fulfilling the standards and ethics in reporting the public opinion survey. Reporting standards and ethics is a critical instrument that keeps the journalism quality. Apart from the written reporting code of ethics advised by journalism associations and individual news providers, news media firms have to establish a specific working rules and a proper training system to stand guarantee for the reliable, true and fair reporting of the public opinion surveys, which exert immense impact on the audiences' attitudes towards the government policies and important national issues.