According to a recent 52-nation online survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, the general consensus among consumers across much of the world is that the media did a poor job informing the public about the issues leading up to the current financial crisis.

In every region, except Latin America, the percent of people who agreed or strongly agreed that media coverage was inadequate outnumbered those who disagreed — by two-to-one.

Q: The news media did not do a good job of informing me of issues that led up to the global financial crisis

EU – Europe
APIMEA – Asia Pacific, India, Middle East and Southern Africa
LA – Latin America
NA – North America

The two regions where consumers were most dissatisfied were Europe and North America. Not surprisingly, these were the areas hit hardest by the current economic crisis. GDP in Western Europe and North America were the lowest among all regions covered.

In North America, 51 percent agreed that coverage leading up to the crisis was inadequate compared to 20 percent who disagreed. In Europe, 48 percent agreed compared to 22 percent.

On the other hand, consumers in many Asia Pacific nations, where the impact of the economy hasn’t been as harsh, were generally less critical of the media.

Discrepancies between nations also reflect varying levels of consumer confidence.

Although Nielsen’s broader survey of global consumer confidence reported a near-universal decline across the world’s population, expectations plummeted significantly in Russia, Hungary and Latvia. These were among the countries where media fared worst. Moreover, among the top five countries where consumers believed there was not enough coverage of the global crisis, four also are where media fared least well overall.

Attitudes about early media coverage were most positive, however, in the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, Venezuela and India, all of which scored above the global average.

Factors that drove the failure to communicate were varied.

Some critics have argued that the financial media was too close to those it covered. What is more, the speed of negative events following the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing caught not only journalists by surprise, but also economists and government officials.

Yet it hasn’t been all bad news for the media. Globally, many of the 25,000-plus consumers polled between March 19 and April 2 believe their performance has improved over time. In much of the Asia Pacific region, the public thought the media was doing a good job in providing information about what the issues are and what governments are doing to address them. And in North America, 50 percent said the current media “is helping me to better understand what governments are doing to solve the problems.” This is almost a complete reversal from opinions about earlier coverage.

During the 2pm to 3pm (EST) daypart on Monday, the combined audiences for CNN, CNBC, FOX News, and MSNBC jumped by 71% over the average daily audience for that daypart between Sept. 1 and Sept. 28, according to Nielsen.  The 3pm to 4pm daypart saw an even larger jump (103%) over the average audience for the prior portion of September. 

CNN, CNBC, FOX NEWS, and MSNBC’s combined audience spiked at almost 7.1 million viewers during the 5pm to 6pm hour — an 84% increase over that daypart’s average daily audience for Sept. 1 through Sept. 28.

Also surging on Monday: blog discussions with the terms “wall street” and “bailout.”  Overall, nearly 2% of all blog posts on Sept. 29 mentioned the term “bailout.”

Meanwhile, traffic to online brokerage websites was up by 30% between September 15 and 21 — the week that AIG and Lehman Brothers collapsed, according to Nielsen data released Tuesday.

Unique visitors to online trading sites increased from a weekly average of 9.2 million during the previous seven weeks (July 28 – September 14) to nearly 12 million during the week ending September 21. 

ShareBuilder.com, Scottrade.com, and Merrill Lynch’s corporate website traffic also jumped between September 15 and 21 — by 217%, 104%, and 128%, respectively.

The total number of people accessing the Internet remained stable during that time period.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in The Baltimore Sun.