The U.K.
terror plot that hit the headlines June 29 with the discovery of two
undetonated car bombs in London
took a strange and disturbing turn last week.
One day later, attackers drove a vehicle into the Glasgow
airport terminal, triggering a panicky, fiery scene, convincing British
authorities to raise the alert level to “critical” and generating stepped-up
security in the United States. Then the unusual nature of the plot—and the
plotters—began to unfold.
“Shocking revelations that doctors were at the heart of that
British terror plot,” declared Katie Couric on CBS’s July 2 newscast. The next
morning, while reporting that six suspects in the case were doctors or medical
students, ABC’s “Good Morning America” hammered away at the theme of
“professional healers who were apparently determined to kill.”
“It’s a very disturbing development morally and practically,”
asserted ABC’s Terry Moran. “Doctors are trusted all over the world.”
On the July 4 “Today” program, NBC correspondent Lisa Myers
reported that “the British government now is looking at how to tighten scrutiny
of foreign doctors who come here to practice medicine.”
By the end of the week, there was an alarming, if tenuous, American
connection to the saga. Anchoring a July 6 ABC radio newscast, Charles Gibson
noted that “months before their unsuccessful attempt to bomb the entertainment
district in London and the airport
in Glasgow, some of the terror suspects were thinking about coming to the U.S.”
The FBI confirmed that two of the suspects had contacted an agency about
practicing medicine in this country.
The London and Glasgow
terror attacks failed to inflict serious casualties, and the Fourth of July passed
without incident in the United States.
But what Terry Moran called “the doctors’ plot” (ABC ran the caption “Dr.
Jekyll, Mr. Hyde” during his report) was enough of a man-bites-dog story to
lead the coverage last week. According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, the subject
filled 14% of the newshole in the period from July 1-6. It was also the No. 1 story in the newspaper
(12%), online (22%) and network news (19%) sectors. (The previous week, it had
been the fourth-biggest story at 5%. But
only the June 29 discovery of the two car bombs occurred early enough to be
counted in that Index.)
The political firestorm that erupted over President Bush’s
July 2 commutation of Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s 30-month sentence in the Valerie
Plame case was the second-biggest story last week (at 11%). And the 2008
Presidential race was punctuated by one of those yardsticks that attracts plenty
of media attention, even if it may be a forgotten statistic when the votes come
start to come in months from now. Driven by the release of second-quarter 2007
fundraising numbers, the campaign was third last week, generating 8% of the
overall coverage.
The immigration debate—the lead story at 12% in last week’s
Index—slipped to fourth (4%) as the fallout from the bill’s June 28 demise
waned. The fifth-biggest story (at 3%) was a potpourri of July Fourth-related
events that included fireworks accidents and a three cent rise in the cost of
beer. Not included was the big upset at the July 4 Coney Island
hot dog-eating contest where American Joey Chestnut devoured 66 dogs in 12
minutes to beat the previously invincible Japanese champ Takeru Kobayashi. That
stunning display of epicurean athleticism attracted only a minimal amount of
coverage.
PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of
48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news
consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and
topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and
differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.)
The President’s decision to commute “Scooter” Libby’s
sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury in the case involving the
outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame did
not generate quite as much coverage as Libby’s conviction in early March. (The
conviction was the top story that week at 13%.) But the President’s action did
ignite a heated debate in political and media circles. It was the top story last week in the two media
sectors (cable news at 20% and radio at 11%) that are home to the talk shows.
On the July 5 edition of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris
Matthews aired a heavyweight battle of sound bites. Interviewed on a radio
program, former President Bill Clinton—whose 1998 impeachment was based on
charges of obstruction and perjury—lashed out at the Bush administration. “They
believe that they should be able to do what they want to do and the law is a
minor obstacle,” he said.
White House spokesman Tony Snow responded partly in Yiddish
by asserting that “I don’t know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a
gigantic case of it.”
On the same night on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity &
Colmes” commentators Mark Steyn and Juan Williams got into a high-decibel
debate on the subject. Supporting the President’s decision, Steyn said that
“what’s at issue here” in the Libby conviction “is the criminalization of
politics.”
Williams, a critic of the move, responded that the case was
“not about disagreeing…it’s about managing and manipulating intelligence” in
the run-up to the Iraq
war.
The other big political story last week, the 2008
presidential campaign, was fueled by the fundraising numbers. The news was good
for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, who collected more than $32 million in the
quarter, outraising Hillary Clinton and setting a new fundraising record for
Democrats. The news was grim for Republican contender John McCain, who raised
slightly more than $11 million and began cutting staff.
For McCain, once the presumed GOP favorite whose campaign
has staggered early, the numbers seemed to fit the media narrative for him thus
far.
Thus,
this first paragraph in the New York Times July 3 page-one story: “The
presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who once
seemed poised to be his party’s nominee in 2008, acknowledged yesterday that it
was in a political and financial crisis as a drop in fund-raising forced it to
dismiss dozens of workers and aides and retool its strategy on where to
compete.”
Some observers have speculated that McCain—perhaps the most
vocal supporter of the Iraq
troop buildup among the presidential hopefuls—could benefit from a respite from
bad news about the war. And though Iraq
has not vanished from the headlines, coverage of the war—and particularly the
debate over strategy—has recently tailed off.
Last
week events on the ground in Iraq
amounted to the sixth-biggest story (3%) followed immediately by the policy
debate (also 3%). This marks the sixth week in a row that the argument over Iraq
strategy failed to make the Index’s roster of top-five stories. That can be
traced back to the May 24 Congressional votes to fund the war without withdrawal
timetables, an event that was seen at the time as a major victory for President
Bush. That stands in stark contrast to the first three months of the year when the
policy debate dominated the news agenda.
Last week, even veteran Republican Senator Pete Domenici’s
decision to break with Bush over Iraq—a
move that mirrors recent statements by GOP Senators Richard Lugar and George
Voinovich—failed to move the policy debate up past seventh place in the Index.
Yet, with all sides gearing up for a potentially decisive
showdown over the war that could start with this month’s interim progress
report on the conflict, the Washington-based battle over Iraq
may once again command the media’s singular attention.
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Note: Because of the July 4 holiday, no editions of the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, or any of MSNBC's regular programming were available for inlcusion on that day. In addition, the 5 pm radio headlines from ABC news radio and CBS news radio on Tuesday, July 3rd, were not included in this week's sample due to a technical error.
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