Online
October 17, 2011
Which candidate has fared best in the news media in the first five months of the race for president?
The Media Primary
2:1 - Coverage of the immigration debate compared to that of the Mexican drug war
On September 24, Macias Castro, a local news editor for the Mexican daily paper Primera Hora, was found decapitated in the city of Nuevo Laredo near the Texas border. A note near her body said she had been killed for writing about the drug cartels on social media websites and implicates the powerful cartel, Los Zetas.
Castro is the 7th journalists killed in Mexico this year and, according to Committee to Protect Journalists, the 45th murdered since 2006— when Mexican President Calderon began the campaign to crack down on drug cartels. Many Mexican news organizations have decided, even publically, to stop reporting on the cartels rather than put their journalists at risk. Dedicated journalists like Castro have, in turn, moved to twitter and other social network sites—using pseudonyms to stay anonymous—to report on the cartels’ actions.
In the five year war, nearly 40,000 people have been killed, including governors, senators, military personnel and citizens, according to media reports.
The battle is occurring right along the U.S. border and is largely fueled by drug consumption in the U.S.
The story, though, has generated little attention in the U.S. press. Since January 2009, just 0.6% of the U.S. newshole has focused on the Drug War in Mexico, placing it 12th amid all international stories in that period, according to PEJ's News Coverage Index.
Another border issue, the U.S. immigration debate, has generated twice the attention, 1.1%, garnered by the drug war.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: September 28, 2011
September 26, 2011
How do people get news and information about the community where they live? Traditional research has suggested that Americans watch local TV news more than any other local information source. But a new report by the PEJ and the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in association with the Knight Foundation offers a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the ecosystem of community information.
How People Learn About Their Local Community
19.4% - Biggest Week of 9/11-related news in the past five years
Coverage related to the events of 9/11/2001 has become a staple of the news agenda, often timed around the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. But in recent years, bitter controversies involving Islam—rather than remembrances or commemorations—have driven that 9/11 coverage.
The biggest week of 9/11-related coverage since PEJ began tracking news in January 2007 occurred from September 6-12, 2010, when the subject accounted for 19.4% of the newshole. But it was media attention to Terry Jones—the pastor of a small church in Florida who threatened to burn the Koran on 9/11—that accounted for 70% of that coverage. Remembrances and dedications surrounding the anniversary accounted for just 30%.
The controversy over building an Islamic Center near Ground Zero has also generated significant attention in recent years. The No. 2 week of 9/11-connected coverage occurred from August 16-22, 2010, when President Obama seemed to offer a message of support for the project. The mosque debate filled 14.7% of the newshole that week. One week later (August 23-29), the same subject accounted for 6.1% of the overall newshole, making it the third-biggest week of 9/11-related attention.
Two weeks that focused on 9/11 anniversary remembrances and memorials round out the top five list. They were September 8-14, 2008 (5.9% of the overall newshole) and September 7-13, 2009 (5.5%).
One distinctly different kind of 9/11 story registered as No. 8 on the list, at 3.4%, the week of December 20-26, 2010. It was the passage of the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act which provides health monitoring and financial aid to 9/11 responders and was approved only after considerable political skirmishing and a GOP filibuster.
This list also does not include one other major event that ended up as the biggest single-week story since PEJ began the News Coverage Index. The killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by Navy Seals generated 69% of the overall coverage from May 2-8, 2011.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: September 9, 2011
0.2% - News coverage focused on the Famine In Africa in 2011
In the Horn of African 12 million people are facing a hunger crisis and nearly a half million children are at risk of dying from malnutrition and disease. On July 20 the United Nations officially declared famine in the region—the first officially declared famine since 1985 and the first significant food crisis in three years.
But this famine has received very little attention in the U.S. mainstream media. In July and August the food crisis has accounted for just 0.7% of the newshole. Year-to-date the crisis registers at just 0.2%.
The little coverage here highlights a trend in media attention to Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes the Horn of Africa as well as other regions.
The ethnic conflict in Sudan, for example, and the succession of Southern Sudan from the north has accounted for just 0.1% of the newshole this year, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. The civil war in the Ivory Coast and the arrest of President Laurant Gbagbo accounted for just 0.1% this year.
The ethnic violence following the 2011 election in Nigeria as well as economic crisis has accounted for less than 0.1% of the newshole. And the violence in Somalia by al-Qaida linked Al-Shabaab, has accounted for less than 0.1% of the newshole this year.
The Tunisian protests, on the other hand, led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, accounted for 0.3% of the newshole, or three-times the coverage. And the uprising in Egypt that led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak have accounted for a full 3.8% of the newshole this year.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: September 1, 2011
4% - Amount of economic coverage focused on the housing crisis
With the battle over the national debt, an unstable stock market, and stubbornly high unemployment numbers, the national economy has been a major topic in the news. Indeed the economy is the most covered story in 2011, accounting for almost one-fifth or 18.3% of newshole, thus far.
What economic storylines have made up this coverage?
According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, nearly half (45.6%) of the economic coverage from January 1 through August 21 has focused on the hotly disputed national deficit and budget. An additional 16.9% dealt with budget battles at the state and local level. Combined, nearly two-thirds of the economic coverage (62.5%) focused on political fights stemming from budget and debt negotiations.
Aspects of the economy receiving less coverage included attention to unemployment and jobs (7.9%), the ongoing housing problems (4%), and the general effect on average Americans (1.5%). Together, these three aspects, which directly affect many Americans, accounted for just one-fifth of the attention generated by the budget battles.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: August 24, 2011
24% - Percentage of Ron Paul’s campaign coverage in 2011 compared to Donald Trump's
In the days after his runner-up finish to Michele Bachmann in Iowa’s August 13 GOP straw poll, Texas Congressman Ron Paul complained about a lack of media coverage, accusing the press of being “frightened by me challenging the status quo and the establishment."
As pundits debate whether Paul is getting the attention he deserves, a PEJ analysis of campaign coverage this year indicates he is the 10th leading election newsmaker— trailing far behind non-candidates Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and as well as floundering Republican hopeful Newt Gingrich.
From January 1-August 14, Paul has been a dominant newsmaker in only 27 campaign stories. (To be considered a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) That is less than one-quarter of the media attention generated by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (120 stories), who is the top newsmaker among Republican candidates. And he has received 25% as much coverage as Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman (108 stories).
Paul’s coverage also lags far behind Trump (94 stories), who dallied with a run before opting out in mid-May and Palin (85 stories), who has given no indication to date that she will enter the race. In addition, Paul trails longshot candidate and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman (44 stories) and Texas Governor, Rick Perry (33 stories) who only announced his candidacy on August 13.
The only significant GOP candidates that Paul is besting are former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (21 stories) and businessman Herman Cain (11 stories).
The top campaign newsmaker overall is incumbent President Barack Obama, at 221 stories.
In a further attempt to gauge the post-straw poll attention to Paul’s campaign, PEJ also used the Snapstream server’s closed captioning capability to assess the candidates’ television coverage in the first few days after that balloting.
The sample included the three network Sunday morning panel shows on August 14, the morning and evening network news programs on August 15 and four hours of prime-time cable and one hour of daytime from each of the three major cable news networks on August 15.
According to that analysis, Paul was mentioned just 29 times. By comparison, Perry was mentioned 371 times, Bachmann was mentioned 274 times, and Romney was mentioned 183 times.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: August 17, 2011
August 11, 2011
Overview
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures
the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube.
These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and
shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of online blogs
and other social media sites has allowed news-consumers and others outside the
mainstream press to have more of a role in agenda setting, dissemination and
interpretation. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects
in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compared with the
narrative in the traditional press.
Social media and the technologies available to help
track it are also continuously changing and evolving. To stay current and
reflect the social media conversation as it relates to news, PEJ constantly
re-evaluates its methods of tracking and analyses.
After studying new tracking options, as well has
noting adjustments made by some of the web tracking sites PEJ has used to
gather posts and tweets, the Project made changes to the methodology beginning in August 2011 to both update
and diversify the organizations it uses to gather and sort the top news stories
each day.
Since PEJ began monitoring social media in January 2009, it relied on
the tracking site Icerocket to determine the most linked-to stories on blogs
and Tweetmeme for the most linked to stories on Twitter. For a time, PEJ also
relied on compilation for blog material with a news web tracking list from
Technorati, but that tracking was suspended.
The new method continues to use the links as a
proxy for measuring what social media are discussing, but allows for a wider
range of sources and expands the possible types of subjects that appear among
the most-discussed. While the old method relied on one source for each type of
social media, the new relies on four, making the selection criteria more
robust and the list more diverse.
Universe and Calculations
For blogs, both Technorati
and Icerocket provide
lists of the most-discussed stories at any given moment. Those will be
monitored daily and a list for the week compiled. For the discussion on
Twitter, two tracking sites will be used that list the top news subject each
day, Tweetmeme and Twitturly.
The new method differs from the previous method in
two primary ways. In the previous method, the top stories were reported in
terms of the percent of links. Now, since the new tracking lists do not offer
the precise number of links going to each URL, the ranking will be determined
by the number of times each subject appears in the daily list each week. (See
below for a specific description of how the current list is calculated.)
As a result of these changes, statistical
comparisons between reports issued before August 2011 and those after are
difficult to make. The earlier method included a percentage of links for each
top story, but the new method instead offers a simple ranking of stories in
order. This new system of ranking is stronger and more intuitive because
offering percentages for online content is problematic. The internet is
ever-changing and growing, and there is no constant baseline or denominator to
calculate percentages from.
Every weekday at 9 a.m. EST, a PEJ researcher captures the lists from each
of the four tracking web sites and records the five top stories on each. Each
site uses a different method for the creation of their particular lists.
For the top stories on blogs:
- Technorati
indexes more than a million English-language blogs. The site uses its own
algorithm to determine the daily list of the “Hottest
Blogosphere Items” that tracks the number of blogs linking to a given
story, along with the authority and influence of such blogs. Technorati does
not disclose the details of its algorithm, but there are two reasons why PEJ
believes the site is accurate and reliable. One, the stability of Technorati
and the acceptance of its measures as an industry standard make the site a
frequently used resource. Two, an examination of the top stories on Technorati over
several months shows that their lists comport well with other aggregator sites.
- Icerocket’s
list of “Top Blog Posts”
aggregates the top stories discussed in the blogosphere at any given time.
Based on the tracking of more than 3,000 blog posts a day, Icerocket’s algorithm
incorporates the number of blogs linking to a specific article along with the
“rank” or popularity of different blogs. In the previous methodology, the NMI used
the page that tracked the most popular “news” stories. That list,
however, has become limited to more traditional news sites. Thus, PEJ has
switched to a broader Icerocket list, its Top Blog Posts page, to allow for a
wider range of sources.
Each of the top stories (10 combined from the two sites each weekday) is coded
by PEJ staff for its primary storyline or focus. At the end of the week,
researchers count the number of times each storyline appeared out of the 50
stories and determine the ranking of subjects based on those frequencies. If
two or more stories appeared the same number of times, the final ranking is
determined by factoring in how highly the tied stories appeared throughout the
week.
For the top stories on Twitter:
- Tweetmeme
tracks all the links from public Tweets and lists which stories were linked-to
most often over the previous 24 hours. As with Icerocket, PEJ has changed the
page on Tweetmeme that is followed. Previously, the NMI included the “News” page.
Currently, the NMI follows the main “Everything”
page so that more sources and topics can be measured.
- Twitturly
uses a similar methodology. The site tracks every time someone tweets a URL and
ranks the URLs that get the most links over the previous 24 hours. PEJ uses
Twitturly’s “News” page, which includes any
type of URL except for pictures and videos.
The method for determining the top subjects on Twitter is the same as is
used for blogs.
For all the sites captured, only stories written in English are included in
the sample. Links to pictures on yfrog and videos on Twitcasting are also excluded.
Differences from the NCI
In addition to the base calculation,
there are three differences between the NMI and the NCI to note:
1. While the capture times for the
Web sites included in the News Coverage Index rotate each day, a decision was
made to keep the times the same for the New Media Index. The reasoning is that
since these lists compile the number of links to stories over a 24 or 48-hour
window, rotating the time of capture would result in different increments of
times between each capture. Through testing, PEJ has discovered that the
stories on the lists change significantly more over a 24-hour period than they
do over a 12 or 16-hour period.
2. While the News Coverage Index is
comprised of primarily U.S.-based media outlets, the aggregators of blogs and
other social media include both U.S. and non-U.S. blogs. In addition, stories
that are linked to can be from non-U.S. sources.
3. PEJ’s weekly News
Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is
Monday through Friday.
YouTube Videos
The New Media Index also includes a
section of the most popular news video on YouTube each week.
Each Friday at noon EST, a PEJ staff
member captures the list
of most viewed news and
politics videos on YouTube over the previous
week. These videos are categorized as such on the YouTube site and are often a
mix of mainstream news reports, raw footage relating to breaking events, or
other types of public affairs clips. PEJ determines the top five most viewed
videos as they are listed on YouTube’s page at the time of capture.
Note: After consulting various reference guides
and outside consultants on usage, the Project has chosen to refer to its
several weekly content analysis reports as “indexes”—the version largely
accepted in journalism—instead of “indices”—a term used more frequently in
scientific or academic writing.
2x - Twice as many debt ceiling stories focus on Obama as on all GOP officials combined
With an August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling looming, the showdown in Washington is leading the news. Last week, July 18-24, attention to the issue accounted for a full 29% of the newshole making it by far the largest component of overall coverage of the economy (which has filled 35% of the newshole).
As Democrats and Republicans have debated the issue, which party and what figures have been viewed as the key players by the media.
An analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds President Barack Obama is getting by far the most attention.
Of the debt ceiling stories from July 1-24 in which someone has prominently figured (featured in at least 50% of the story), Obama has been a major presence in 59% of the stories. All other Democrats made up another 15%, meaning the party is a major focus in fully 75% of the debt ceiling stories.
By contrast, Republicans have been a primary focus in 33% of the stories—less than half as many as Democrats. (A story can prominently feature more than one figure). And unlike Obama, who has been by far the dominant democratic figure, several prominent Republicans have shared the attention.
For instance, Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is leading GOP side in the negotiations, was prominently featured in 11% of the debt stories. Next is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at 6% and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at 3%.
McConnell’s counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is a prominent figure in just 2% of the stories, and he is also the second most news-making Democrat.
Tricia Sartor of PEJ
Date Posted: July 27, 2011
July 18, 2011
As traditional newsrooms are shrinking, a trend is emerging, the non-profit newsroom. A new PEJ study reveals that a large number of these non-profit sites are offering news reporting that is clearly ideological or partisan in nature. The survey also looks at the characteristic of more balanced versus more ideological sites. Read the full report for more on who these new players are, what the nature of their news coverage is, and how these operations are changing the ecosystem of news.
Non-Profit News
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