Poll: News stories draw highly different audiences

WASHINGTON (AP) — Women were more likely than men to follow the news story about Laci Peterson very closely and blacks were more likely than whites to closely watch the legal troubles of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press. 

According to the poll released Dec. 23, women were almost twice as likely as men to say they were very closely following the case of Peterson, a murdered pregnant woman, whose husband is accused in the killing. 

And blacks were far more likely than whites — by 47 percent to 13 percent — to be closely following developments in the sexual assault case against professional basketball star Kobe Bryant very closely. By a smaller margin, blacks were more likely to be closely following the molestation case against singer Michael Jackson, by 42 percent to 26 percent.

Most everyone showed interest in news about Iraq — the top 2003 story in terms of media interest — but the audiences for other high-profile news stories varied dramatically. Almost two-thirds, or 63 percent, said they followed news about the war in Iraq very closely. 

White evangelicals were twice as likely as Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants to have very closely watched the case of the Alabama chief justice's efforts to defy federal orders to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from a state courthouse. 

Voters over age 65 were more than four times as likely as young adults to have kept a sharp eye on news of the Medicare bill in Congress.

The study was based on Pew polls throughout the year and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.