Feminist Media Project :: Poll Release

Public decreasingly interested in Pickton trial
Amount of media coverage generally seen as 'just right'; Although citizen journalism gets thumbs down

The second poll on public interest in the murder trial of Robert Pickton in six months has found declining interest among British Columbians, with only 7% very interested in the case in June compared with 16% in January when the trial began. Only 1 in 10 residents access information about the trial daily, while 1 in 3 say they never access trial news.

British Columbians over age 55 are more interested in trial coverage, with 38% accessing information about the trial daily or every few days. Women are significantly less interested in coverage than men with 62% saying they access information about the trial less than once a week or never.

Interest in new forms of journalism, which include blogs from citizens and sex trade workers, was very limited, with 74% of British Columbians saying they aren’t accessing this kind of new media content, which is often found online. Perhaps, not surprisingly, approximately 50% of British Columbians over the age of 35 were not at all interested in this type of information, with 18-34 year old residents slightly more interested (24% of this age group said they were “somewhat interested” in this type of information).

Overall, the majority of British Columbians (52%) still found the amount of media coverage to date "just right," with one-fifth (21%) still saying it is "too much".

The poll, which was conducted by Mustel Group for the Feminist Media Project at the UBC School of Journalism, gauged public interest in the trial, which is in its sixth month after starting on January 22, 2007.

This poll, and one completed previously by the CBC involving the trial of Paul Bernardo for the sexual murders of two young women in the mid-1990s Toronto, found similar results suggesting that a significant proportion of the public were not interested in media coverage of that trial. That study of 1,000 respondents found that 46 per cent agreed that media were paying too much attention to the trial; 36 per cent disagreed. Also, more than half, 52 per cent, said the coverage was so upsetting, they would prefer not to be exposed to it. Only 33 per cent disagreed.

These results conflict with the perception that sensational crime stories, such as serial murder, sexual homicides and/or homicides involving children, drive audience interest. These types of crimes tend to gain large amounts of media coverage in North America - with crime and violent content filling between 20 and 25 per cent of the news section in newspapers and on television. This is despite the fact that no systematic evidence exists that audience members consistently prioritize crime content over other types of news information, such as environment and health news. In fact, at times, it may be the reverse.

These results were based on a survey of 852 B.C. adults between May 30 and June 10. The margin of error is 3.4 percentage points at 95% confidence level in the most conservative case.

Dr. Mary Lynn Young, Assistant Professor
UBC School of Journalism
604.822.9778
mlyoung@interchange.ubc.ca