Talk of terrorism was all over the mainstream news media
last week.
Like many outlets, ABC’s July 25 nightly
newscast reported on the “dry run” warning issued by the Transportation
Security Administration after several strange devices—such as a block of cheese
and cell phone charger—were confiscated from airport passengers. “The concern
was whether terrorists were conducting dress rehearsals for a possible attack,”
explained correspondent Lisa Stark. “Given the heightened security worries this
summer, officials aren’t taking any chances.”
That same night, after a story on the battle against
Al-Qaeda in Iraq,
CNN’s Lou Dobbs brought the threat closer to home. He reported on Air Force
General Victor Renuart’s concern that “there could be Al-Qaeda cells in this
country” and the general’s belief that more military units are needed “to cope
with the aftermath of any nuclear, chemical or biological attack within the United
States.”
A New York Daily News story asked a panel of experts to
grade the country’s war on terror. “Turns out they’ve got a bad feeling in
their guts, too” the article stated, referring to Homeland Security chief
Michael Chertoff’s famous “gut feeling”
that the U.S. faces heightened terror risks this summer. “The overall effort
rates no better than a ‘C.’” The disquieting headline read: “Experts: U.S.
still not safe.”
The nation’s effort to combat terrorism was not the biggest
story last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from July 22-27. That
designation went to the 2008 Presidential campaign, which filled 12% of the
newshole, and was fueled by the July 23 CNN/YouTube debate. The continuing
showdown between the Democratic-led Congress and beleaguered attorney general
Alberto Gonzales was the second-biggest story at 6%.
But driven by the “dry run” airport scare, terror did finish
as the third-biggest story of the week, filling 4% of the newshole. (It got the
most coverage on cable at 6%.) And although there have been no successful major
attacks in recent weeks, the subject has become a major staple of the media
menu.
Starting with the foiled car bomb plot in London
on June 29, terrorism has been a top-five story in each of the past five weeks.
In the week of July 1-6, the unfolding “doctors’ plot” to launch attacks in London
and at the Glasgow airport helped
make terror the top story in the media. The week after that, it was Chertoff’s
“gut feeling” and a new report warning of a strengthened Al-Qaeda threat that
made the top-five story list. And in the period from July 15-20, the National
Intelligence Estimate again warning of a reconstituted Al-Qaeda helped make
terror concerns the third-biggest story of the week.
Yet this current outbreak of coverage was preceded by a long
period of minimal media attention. Terrorism, or the threat of it, was not a
top-10 story in nine of the 12 weeks leading up to the discovery of the UK
car bomb plot. And only once in that three-month period—with the foiling of a
plan to attack New Jersey’s Fort
Dix—did the topic make the top-five
story roster.
The current terrorism narrative in the news media was
triggered by a major event—the failed attack in London.
But since then, it has been fueled largely by public pronouncements and reports
that have reinforced the sense of heightened vulnerability without divulging
specific details or warnings. That may leave many Americans confused about the
actual threat level. And in the post 9/11 world, it is enough to trigger a
summer of jittery terror news.
The war in Iraq, which the Bush administration and
supporters consider a key front in the war on terror while detractors see it as
a diversion from that mission, helped round out the top-five story list last
week. The policy debate (fourth-biggest story at 4%) was followed by the impact
of the war on the homefront (fifth at 3%) and events in Iraq
(sixth at 3%).
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.)
Presidential politics
The much-ballyhooed CNN/YouTube debate—in which citizens
prepared video questions for the Democratic candidates—helped make the 2008
campaign the top story of the week. (It led in all sectors, filling 8% of the
newshole in newspapers, 13% online, 10% network TV, 15% cable, and 14% radio.)
If the debate was the major event, the big news may have
been made when frontrunner Hillary Clinton and lead challenger Barack Obama
continued to spar over whether to sit down as President with enemy world
leaders.
On NBC’s July 25 “Today Show,” Tim Russert characterized
that disagreement as a “microcosm of this campaign…Obama versus Clinton,
experience versus change, convention versus inspiration.”
“The tussle could be a turning point in the Democratic race,
which has seen little direct engagement between the top two candidates until
now,” declared the front-page July 27 Washington Post story.
An Attorney General
under fire
The confrontation between Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
and Congress surfaced as a major story back in March, when the media began
focusing on the controversy over a group of eight fired U.S.
attorneys. Nearly five months later, tensions between Gonzales and Congress
seem to have reached the boiling point. (The topic was the second-biggest story
in all five media sectors last week.) And now the question of whether the AG
has misled Congress about a number of issues—including the warrantless wiretap
program—has brought terms like perjury into the discussion.
The July 24 edition of the CBS nightly newscast contained an
exchange in which Gonzales told a Senate committee that “I’ve decided to stay
and fix the problem,” only to hear Rhode Island
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse respond: “It appears to a lot of people that you,
sir, are in fact the problem.” In what
now passes for understatement, PBS’s NewsHour on July 27 described the attorney
general as being “under heavy fire.”
Horror in Connecticut
While it is relatively rare for individual crimes to make
the top-10 list, news of the vicious home invasion that left three family
members dead in Cheshire, Connecticut
was the seventh-biggest story last week at 2%. The July 25 treatment of the
tragedy on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show suggested both its horror and power—if it
could happen there, it could happen anywhere. The program looked at how such a
nightmare could occur in a “quiet Connecticut
town,” and described it as a “crime that goes beyond any kind of
category—location or description.”
The story got the most attention on radio (5%), thanks in
large part to the efforts of conservative talk host Michael Savage, who angrily
blamed the media—which he accused of liberal bias—of not paying enough
attention to the horrific crime.
The arrested
quarterback, the troubled actress, and the spooky cat
Three stories that generated their share of buzz last week
did not end up on PEJ’s top-story list. Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael
Vick’s not-guilty plea to charges related to dogfighting generated 2% of the
overall coverage and finished just below the top-10 stories. Lindsay Lohan’s alcohol and drug bust, while
creating a feeding frenzy on gossip web sites and in the entertainment media,
finished further down and generated only 1% of the overall coverage.
Attracting even less coverage, according to the Index, was a
riveting tale of animal instinct, and maybe even compassion. Oscar, a cat
living in a Rhode Island nursing
home, has the ability to determine when someone is near death and curls up at
the person’s bedside for the final hours. He reportedly has a perfect track
record of 25 such bedside visits in recent years.
Oscar’s exploits were written up in the New England Journal
of Medicine and featured on the July 26 editions of both the NBC and CBS
evening news. The CBS report quoted one nurse summing it up this way: “He’s
just a cat, he’s miserable half the time…wants his treats and then be left
alone. But then when he feels that there’s something wrong, he steps right up.”
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Note: On Monday, July 23, CNN's 7:00 pm ET edition of the Situation Room was preempted by a presidential debate and therefore was not included in this week's sample.
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