Study finds a lower accuracy and higher error rate for science news coverage than for earlier studies of regular news coverage. (RB)

The number of errors found in coverage of social issues was greater than that for general coverage and comparable to that for science coverage. (KS)

Reports that scientists prefer direct contact with journalists and believe that public information officers play a minor role in disseminating research findings. (FL)

Concludes that scholars favor anonymous review of manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals and want suggestions from referees. Finds also that referees tend to place more importance on the theoretical importance of a manuscript than do scholars. (FL)

Describes a method for determining the accuracy of science news coverage. (RB)

An effort was made in this study to determine whether the absence or presence of news film in a television news segment influences a believability or preference judgment made by a respondent when comparing a television report directly with a newspaper report of the same event. One hundred eight students at Temple University viewed one of two…

A small sample of Blacks in poor, urban areas was studied to identify the extent to which age, sex, occupation, and income are related to media preference and attitudes toward the media. Occupation and income were not predictive of preference for media content and attitudes toward media. (Author/GC)

Results of two studies indicate that the way in which Likert scale data are scored can make a difference when statistical significance tests are used. The studies raise a number of questions about the use of Likert scales in communication research. (GT)

Newspapers devoted 8.8 percent of their space to coverage of social issues; most stories were written by staff members and oriented to issues rather than events. (KS)

Finds that newspapers are more credible than television in some aspects of reporting such as public affairs while television is believed more accurate in news of student protest. (RB)

An analysis of issue-oriented and event-oriented social issues stories in eight major daily newspapers revealed that 61.3 percent of all sentences analyzed were not attributed to a source. (GT)

Reports the results of a survey of 122 science journalists and 110 scientists regarding their attitudes toward science news coverage; notes that the attitudes of the two groups were remarkably similar. (GT)

A study examined the attitudes of scientists toward public information personnel and media coverage. Of 456 subjects (half social and behavioral scientists and half biological scientists) chosen randomly from the "American Men and Women of Science" reference books, 287 responded to the seven-page, two-part questionnaire. Part one contained 34…

Reports on a study that found that public relations practitioners respond in different ways to different moral-ethical dilemmas and that they tend to think they are accountable in some situations to an authority higher than management. Concludes that subjectivism is the prevailing moral-ethical theory of practitioners. (FL)