A college poll of Utah voters shows they gathered most of their information about the U.S. presidential race from national TV news programs.
The survey, conducted by nine Utah colleges and universities and headed by Brigham Young University political science professor David Magleby, also shows that a large percentage of citizens who voted Nov. 7 believe the LDS Church-owned Deseret News and KSL-TV are biased in favor of the church when they report news about the church.
In addition, the survey found that nearly a third of Utahns believe the Salt Lake Tribune is biased against the LDS Church when reporting on it.
The college group used several different questionnaires in its Nov. 7 surveying of voters coming out of selected polling places around the state. A
major purpose of the survey is to project the winners in various races for KBYU Channel 11 just after the polls close.
But the surveyors also ask a number of questions used by Magleby and his students for a variety of academic pursuits. The questionnaire with the media questions was used in 900 interviews with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent, Magleby said.
The survey results debunk a number of generally assumed beliefs, said Magleby, who has been conducting voter exit polls in Utah for years.
In fact, it's become an election night tradition in Utah to watch Magleby's election predictions on KBYU Channel 11, and pollster Dan Jones' exit poll predictions on KSL-TV Channel 5. Jones also polls for the Deseret News.
"Despite the protestations we make about the national TV news media, it was clearly the most important source of information to voters" about the presidential elections this year, Magleby said Friday.
In part that's because local commercial television stations — KSL Channel 5; KUTV Channel 2, KTVX Channel 4, and KSTU Channel 13 — don't cover the national presidential campaigns like local stations used to do, he said.
Local newspapers came in third as the information source of choice behind national TV and local TV, he said. "My guess is a larger percent of Utahns got their campaign news from newspapers than the national average," he said.
The poll results show "people don't put a lot of stock" in TV talk shows — such as "The Tonight Show" — to get their political news, Magleby said.
"The new surprising number" is how many Utahns in 2000 got much of their campaign news from the Internet, he said. All major candidates — even many local legislative candidates — had Web sites this past election. The Internet came in fifth as the main source of campaign news, ahead of TV talk shows but trailing all other sources.
"What is unclear is whether some of these (voters) are just cheapskates — and got their campaign news from newspaper Web sites instead of buying your paper," Magleby said. Both the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune have Web sites where anyone, without charge, can read current editions of the newspapers.
TV stations also have Web sites where a varying amount of their daily newscasts can be viewed.
"The tantalizing data has to do with media bias" and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Magleby said. Utah is unique in the country in that it has a huge majority of citizens that belong to one church and major media outlets owned by that same church, he said.
Magleby found that 66 percent of those interviewed believe KSL-TV is biased in favor of the LDS Church when it is reporting on the church. Seventy-one percent believe the Deseret News is biased in favor of the LDS Church when reporting on the church itself, his survey showed.
He found that 29 percent of the respondents believe the Tribune, owned at present by AT&T, is biased against the LDS Church when reporting about the church.
"I would have thought that number would be higher," Magleby said, "because the general feeling in the community is" that the Tribune is more critical of the church and its leaders. That's based in part on recent incidents and on "the historical newspaper wars" conducted in the early part of the past century "and even into this new century," Magleby said.
Earlier this summer the LDS Church released a scathing statement about a Tribune article that claimed church leaders intended to deceive community leaders and citizens over the use and control of a section of Main Street sold to the church and turned into a public area. The church said the newspaper "impugn(ed) the integrity of the church" in its reporting in the story.
In 1998 Magleby asked the same media questions with about the same responses. In the latest poll he also connected subscribers to the Deseret News and Tribune with their answers. He found that 73 percent of regular readers of the Deseret News believe it is biased in favor of the LDS Church and 31 percent of Tribune readers believe it is biased against the church.
Magleby said his new poll showed that most Utahns see KTVX, KUTV and KSTU news as "basically neutral" in their reporting on the LDS Church.
Only 11 percent said the Deseret News was neutral in its reporting on the church, and only 37 percent said the Tribune was neutral in reporting on the church, Magleby found.
E-MAIL: bbjr@desnews.com