Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s return from
exile was big news for surfers checking the MSNBC Web site on Oct. 18. Aside
from a lengthy AP story that described her hopes for launching a “remarkable
political comeback,” the online treatment included such interactive components
as a primer on the “challenges facing President Gen. Pervez Musharraf” and analyst
Richard Haass’ view of the unstable situation inside a country with an uneasy
alliance with the U.S.
The next day, after Bhutto’s homecoming was punctuated by bomb
attacks that killed approximately 140 people, AOL News highlighted an AP story
speculating on possible perpetrators. While a security official suspected
someone the story identified as “an al-Qaida-linked, pro-Taliban warlord based
near the Afghan border,” Bhutto’s husband pointed the finger at someone
different, at “elements sitting within the government.”
The dramatic and bloody events in Pakistan
constituted the second-biggest story last week as measured by PEJ’s News
Coverage Index for Oct. 14-19, filling 6% of the newshole. Yet the subject was
a much bigger story in one of the five media sectors examined by the Index each
week. In the online outlets, the events in Pakistan
filled 12% of the newshole and were the top web story by a 2-1 margin over the
2008 presidential race (6%).
Given the patterns we have seen since the Index was launched in January, those
numbers are not surprising. In some media sectors, differing coverage
priorities have emerged, and none has been clearer than the online news
outlets’ tendency to provide the broadest range of international news. Thus far
in 2007, four international conflicts—the war in Iraq, tensions between the
U.S. and Iran, the fighting in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian
standoff—have been among the top-seven online stories—far broader than in any
other media.
Last week, aside from Pakistan,
two other geopolitical events/crises made the online sector’s top-10 story list—Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Iran
(the first by a Russian leader in 64 years) was the fourth-biggest story,
filling 6% of the newshole of top stories among the sites examined. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice’s accelerated efforts to facilitate a new round of
peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians was seventh, at 4%
By way of comparison, in the overall Index last week,
Putin’s Iran
visit (2%) and Rice’s Mideast diplomacy (1%) finished
outside of the top-10 story list.
The leading overall story last week was the 2008
presidential campaign (at 11%). After Pakistan,
the third-biggest story was the Iraq
policy debate (5%), followed by events on the ground in Iraq
(4%) and the debate over immigration policy (3%).
PEJ’s News Coverage
Index examines 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.)
Another breaking
news story that emerged last week also attracted more attention in one
particular media sector. The scary news about MRSA, a drug-resistant Staph
infection was driven by several major developments. One was a study in the Oct.
17 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimating
that the spreading bug was doing more damage than expected—infecting about 94,000
Americans and killing about 18,000 of those a year. The other was the news that
a Virginia high school
student had died of MRSA on Oct. 15, temporarily shutting all school facilities
in that county.
The MRSA “superbug”
was the ninth-biggest story overall (3%), but it got the most coverage on
network news. There it was the fifth story at 4%. (It failed to even make the
top-10 story list in cable, online, and radio.)
The health scare
led the Oct. 16 NBC nightly newscast, with anchor Brian Williams, warning of “a
scary, indiscriminate and silent killer,” before turning the story over to the
network’s chief science correspondent Robert Bazell.
The next morning,
CBS “Early Show” correspondent Nancy Cordes was standing in front of the
deceased Virginia teen’s school—Staunton
River High—to deliver a report that warned of research suggesting that MRSA
“may eventually become more deadly than AIDS.”
There are several
reasons why network newscasts may have been inclined to give this story more
coverage, including that sense that its content is applicable to both the authoritative half-hour nightly newscasts and
the more lifestyle-oriented morning shows. At the same time, health and science
have long been valued beats at the networks as epitomized by NBC’s Bazell, a
30-year network veteran who began covering the AIDS epidemic a quarter century
ago, has written a book on a breast cancer treatment and has received numerous
honors for his expertise.
If the staph
infection story seemed to come out of nowhere last week, that’s not the case
with the 2008 presidential campaign, the second-biggest story of the entire
year, according to the News Coverage Index.
Last week marked
the third-consecutive week in which the race for the White House was the top
story, and it was No. 1 in three sectors, radio (9%), newspapers (14%) and
cable (16%).
It’s also no
coincidence that cable news devoted a larger portion of its total coverage to
the campaign last week than any other sector. While daytime cable coverage is
often given over to breaking news events, the prime-time talk shows often
devote more time than many other media outlets
to arguing about whatever the candidates happen to be arguing
about. Overall, indeed, the 2008
campaign has generated more coverage on cable (12% of the newshole) than in any
other sector in 2007. On the Oct. 17 edition of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris
Matthews zeroed in on Democrat Barack Obama’s increasingly aggressive attacks
on Clinton’s views on Iraq—and cheered the
battle.
Obama focused on “the
difference between Hillary and himself,” Matthews summarized. “She wants to
refine the Bush policy in Iraq. He wants to
reject it outright. She says Bush didn’t do it right. He says he didn’t do the
right thing. Finally, the debate we’ve been hoping [for] and deserving as a
country, the debate over the war.”
Two days earlier,
on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” the discussion was about Arizona
Senator John McCain’s questioning of former Massachusetts governor Mitt
Romney’s conservative bona fides. The two guest commentators put their own
partisan spin on things.
Former GOP Senator
Rick Santorum allowed that some of Romney’s views had evolved, but was quick to
point out that unlike Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, there has been
no “flip flopping on the fly” on the Republican side. Democratic strategist Rich
Masters responded by asserting that “there’s no question, whatsoever, that Mitt
Romney’s positions are night and day.”
It is a tried and true cable talk equation of
candidate vs. candidate + pundit vs. pundit. And there are 12 more months of
this campaign to go.
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Note: Due to a technical error, the MSNBC.com web site from Monday, October 15, was not included in this week's sample.
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