What Does The Public Think Of TV’s ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Coverage?

By Alex Weprin 

Mediabistro.com is partnering up with Poll Position, the new polling company founded by former CNN executive Eason Jordan. On occasion, TVNewser and our other blogs will share results from Poll Position polls having to do with news media consumption and coverage. Each Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday night, Poll Position conducts national telephone polling, asking more than 1,000 Americans 10 hot topic questions in addition to demographic questions – gender, race, age, political affiliation. Among the Poll Position questions over the weekend was the following, as suggested by TVNewser:

When it comes to media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests, do you believe the protests have received the right amount of TV news coverage, not enough TV news coverage, or too much TV news coverage?

Just Right
Too Much
Too Little
N/O
24.6 42.3 24.3 8.8

National Telephone Poll of 1,066 Registered Voters / 10.30.11 / Margin of Error +/- 3%

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Among the overall population, the opinion seems to be that the protests are receiving too much coverage, unless you added “Just Right” and “Too Little” together and counted them as one. Those results mostly hold up among the individual demographic groups… with a few notable exceptions:

People 18-29 were far more likely to say that “Occupy” was receiving the right amount of news coverage and more African Americans said “Occupy” received too little coverage than too much or the right amount of coverage.

Finally, there was a clear political distinction, with Democrats overwhelmingly saying that “Occupy” received either the right amount of coverage, or too little coverage, while Republicans overwhelmingly said it received too much coverage. Independents skewed toward there being too much coverage.

The full poll will be released today on Poll Position.

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