As the debt default clock ticked down to
midnight, the state of U.S. economy received even more coverage last week than
the near collapse of Wall Street in September 2008.
For the week of July 25-31, the economy accounted
for 52% of the newshole, almost all of it driven by the debt debate, according
to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
This was the second-highest level of
economic news recorded since PEJ began regularly monitoring the media with its
News Coverage Index in January 2007. The
only week with more economic coverage (and narrowly so, at 53%) was March
16-22, 2009, when the public was outraged to learn that bailed-out insurance
giant AIG had paid millions in company bonuses.
The burst of media attention punctuated
a six-week period during which the economy has utterly dominated the news
agenda, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all the coverage studied by
PEJ through the period. The No. 2 story in during that span, at 6%, was the
tabloid hacking scandal that enveloped Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
The extensive focus on the economy last week also illustrates a trend that has
emerged in more than four years of NCI reports. Coverage of economic issues
spike dramatically when there is a deadline-driven showdown occurring against a
backdrop of partisan warfare.
The largest week of economic coverage in
2010 (40%) was December 6-12, when Obama and the Republicans finally agreed to
a deal on the expiring tax cuts engineered by former President George W. Bush.
Another big week (47%) occurred from February 9-15, 2009, when Congress passed
President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package after a bitter fight.
Given the dominance of the economic
story, the week’s No. 2 subject did not even make double digits. The fallout
from the July 22 attacks in Norway that left scores dead filled 8% of the
newshole.
From there, it was another drop to a series
of stories that each accounted for around 2% of the newshole. The No. 3 subject
was the Mexican drug war. Some of that coverage was fueled by the news about a
failed ATF program that ended up putting guns in the hands of drug traffickers.
The fourth-biggest story (also 2%) was
the war in Afghanistan. One of the top storylines, once again highlighting the
continued instability on the ground, was the assassination of the mayor of
Kandahar, the nation’s second-largest city.
The No. 5 story (2%) involved a
protracted negotiation that was resolved with far less acrimony than the debt
ceiling. After a four-month lockout, players and owners in the National
Football League agreed on a new 10-year collective bargaining pact.
After three weeks of registering among
the top five stories, the Murdoch media scandal accounted for only 1% of the
newshole from July 25-31. That was about the same amount of press attention
devoted to the presidential race last week, a subject that has been eclipsed by
the debt saga in recent weeks.
The
Debt Showdown
The economy was pervasive in every media
sector last week, ranging from filling 39% of the newshole in online news to 75%
in cable news. On the cable and radio talk shows, where ideology and debate
take center stage, the economy accounted for 90% of the airtime studied by PEJ.
That coverage was overwhelmingly fueled
by the debt debate, accounting for almost 90% of the economic storylines last
week.
Several different but related subplots
emerged. At the outset, the media narrative focused on the hardening battle
lines between Democrats and Republicans. “President
Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner escalated their battle over the
national debt on Monday pressing their arguments in a pair of prime-time
television addresses…” stated a July 26 Washington Post story.
“Obama used his 15-minute address
from the White House to urge ‘shared sacrifice’ in tackling the debt, calling
for deep cuts in federal spending to be coupled with higher taxes on the
wealthy and on large corporations,” the story said. “Boehner countered with a shorter speech from
the Capitol, in which he blamed the fiscal crisis on Washington's spending and
urged deep cuts to cure it.”
As deadlock appeared to deepen, some
coverage began homing in on public anger. Introducing the lead story on ABC’s
July 26 evening newscast, anchor Diane Sawyer talked of “Americans up in arms”
with “frustration boiling over, fed up messages pouring into Congress…flooding
the phone lines, crushing the websites.”
Added correspondent Jim Avila” “The
masses [are] telling Washington deadlock on the nation’s debt is not
acceptable.”
A second significant storyline
involved turmoil in the Republican ranks as Speaker Boehner scrambled to
convince his conservative colleagues of the virtues of a debt ceiling deal.
An editorial from the conservative opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal
noted that “the Speaker has made mistakes in his
debt negotiations.” But it added, “If conservatives defeat the Boehner plan,
they'll not only undermine their House majority. They'll go far to re-electing
Mr. Obama and making the entitlement state that much harder to reform.”
“The same message
came from more moderate quarters. Speaking on CNN on July 27, commentator and
former presidential aide David Gergen warned that Boehner’s speakership was at
risk if he could not convince his caucus to sign on to his measure. He
described Boehner “as a leader who knows his job is
on the line and that if he doesn't get this, he's got a runaway caucus and the
Republicans lose stature.”
As
the week wore on, the
media also began reporting on the problems Obama was having with unhappy
liberals in his party.
On the morning of July 31, just hours before the agreement, the
New York Times reported that “however
the debt limit showdown ends…President Obama has moved rightward on budget
policy, deepening a rift within his party heading into the next election… Mr.
Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted
the Republicans' language and in some cases their policies, while signaling a
willingness to break with liberals on some issues.”
In the aftermath of the deal between
Obama and the GOP, that narrative is likely to continue for a while.
The Rest of the Week’s News
The week’s second-largest story, the deadly attacks
in Norway, generated the most attention in the internationally oriented online
news sector, where it accounted for 13% of the newshole.
As the country came to grips with the carnage
caused by anti-Islamic extremist Anders Behring
Breivik, a Wall Street Journal story suggested his views were gaining some
traction in Europe.
The story reported that
Breivik’s “manifesto against the ‘Islamization of Western Europe’ echoed
sentiment that has found a renewed voice on the fringes of mainstream politics
from Sweden to Italy. Populist politicians have won votes and influence by
arguing that Europe is letting in too many people, especially Muslims…”
The next three stories
all accounted for only about 2% of the newshole—news about the raging drug wars
in Mexico, violence related to the Afghanistan conflict and the resolution of
the NFL lockout. Coverage of all three subjects was modest, but in a week
thoroughly dominated by one story, it was enough to propel them into the ranks
of the top five.
Newsmakers of the Week
The two central figures in last
week’s debt debate were also the top two newsmakers overall from July 25-31.
Speaker Boehner was a prominent newsmaker in 7% of the week’s stories (up from
2% the previous week), followed very closely by President Obama, also at 7%
(down slightly from 8%). To register as a prominent newsmaker a figure must be
featured in at least 50% of a story.
The No. 3 newsmaker, at 4%, was the
man who confessed to the July 22 Norway attacks, Anders Behring Breivik. He was
followed (at 3%) by Naser Abdo, the AWOL solider accused of plotting an attack
on Fort Hood Texas. That facility was the site of a November 2009 massacre, allegedly
by a Muslim U.S. Army officer, Nidal Hasan, that took 13 lives.
The next two newsmakers were tied at
1%. One was Nafissatou Diallo, the New York hotel worker who accused former
International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting
her. She recently granted interviews on the subject to Newsweek and ABC
News. The other was David Wu, the
Democratic Congressman from Oregon who announced his resignation last week
after allegations he had a sexual encounter with an 18-year-old girl.
About the NCI
PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different
outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and
radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some
900 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers
with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the
trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The
percentages are based on "newshole," or the space devoted to each
subject in print and online and time on radio and TV. (See Our Methodology.)
In addition, these reports also include a rundown of the week’s leading
newsmakers, a designation given to people who account for at least 50% of a
given story.
Mark
Jurkowitz of PEJ
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