The study presents a n analysis of the effects of a TV newscaster's sex and race on audience perceptions of credibility. While the factors of sex and race and their relation to source credibility have been examined in a number of studies. research has yet to be conducted on the interactive effects of sex and race.Stone' and Whitaker and Whitaker2 found no differences in audience perceptions of male and female newscasters. Unfortunately, no significant research exists which examines the black newscaster in depth. However, Greenburg' and Surlin and Tate4 have looked at the concept of the black media figure and found it ambiguous for both blacks and whites. Thus, while not attempting to draw a parallel between news and entertainment on any overt level (the Greenburg and Surlin and Tate pieces were entertainment oriented) the authors-for want of more conclusive evidence-tentatively suggested that when a largely white audience views a news program, the presence of a black anchorperson may trigger subtle perceptual cues which could differ significantly from the perceptions of that audience of a white anchorperson. That those perceptual cues could be multidimensional in nature has been underscored by Avery and McDermotts and by Markam 6 who found that different personalities on electronic media generated different responses in terms of audience perceptions of credibility.Balon is assistant professor and Beadle assistant instructor of radio-television-film at Texas. Philport is assistant professor of radio-television-film at Maryland.Given the fact that upon combining sex and race in a n evalutive paradigm the differences or lack of differences indicated above may be significantly altered, and on the basis of the previously cited research, three predictions were derived: I ) sex and race will interact significantly in the determination of differences in newscaster credibility; 2) sex will not have an effect on an isolated agent on audience perceptions of female and male newscasters; and 3) the audience will percieve blacks as being less qualified and less reliable than whites when both are considered as anchorpersons. MethodologyMuch research regarding credibility has utilized factor analysis; scores of articles are available which have isolated dimensions of credibility. But as Singletary7 has suggested. the concept of credibility is such a large and ambiguous construct that assignment ofall its many components to several "mathematical" factors could hardly begin to account for a substantial amount of variance. Extending the argument further, if one takes the concept of factor orthogonality at face value, then the plethora of factor analytic studies isolating dimensions of credibility are of little use in post hoc analyses which utilize factor scores or other such parsimonious reduction of data.While a n initial factor analysis was performed in the study (for data reduction), I Vernon A Stone. -Attitude\ Toward Iclcvwon Sews. women" Journal of Broadtu.~rtng. I X 4962. I IY74l. 'Susan Whiukcr and Ron Whiuker. 'Relative E...
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