News Index
From January10-16, the rampage that killed six and badly wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords accounted for 57% of the news coverage studied by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In the past four years, only two stories—both about the 2008 election—generated more attention. The first was the nomination of Barack Obama and John McCain’s surprise selection of running mate Sarah Palin (69% from August 25-September 1). The second was the following week, September 1-7, when the Republicans held their national convention (58%). Aside from the sheer volume of media attention, what have the traumatic events in Tucson meant, as transmitted in the media narrative? This special report, combining PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index with social media analysis technology from Crimson Hexagon, finds several key elements emerging. The Argument over Political Rhetoric was the No. 1 Storyline in the Tucson Coverage. The single biggest shooting-related topic involved a discussion of the tenor of political discourse in America, including its role as a potential catalyst for the tragedy. That theme proved to be the biggest component of the coverage both in mainstream and social media alike. According to the PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which focuses on the mainstream press, the often-heated debate about public discourse accounted for more than a quarter (27%) of all coverage devoted to the shootings last week. That was more than the coverage about the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner and his family (20%), the No. 2 Tucson storyline. And it more than doubled the coverage devoted to the third-biggest narrative, straight news accounts of the shooting and its aftermath, at 12%. Nowhere in the mainstream media did that debate echo more loudly than on the ideological talk shows on radio and cable news. On radio, which includes commercial talk hosts, headlines and NPR, it filled 57% of the airtime devoted to the shooting. On cable, which includes prime-time and some daytime programming, it filled 32%.
Some conservative hosts accused the left of trying to smear the right by suggesting that heated political rhetoric was somehow responsible for the violence in Tucson. As early as Monday January 10, on his prime-time Fox News show, conservative host Bill O’Reilly said, “Only moments…after Congresswoman Giffords was shot, some far-left loons began to spew their hatred: Conservatives encouraged Jared Loughner to pull the trigger. Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Fox News, all spurred the psychopath to kill the six people. The merchants of hate who are peddling this stuff should be accountable.” In part, O’Reilly seemed to be responding to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who the night of the shooting had gone on the air to decry the tone of conservative rhetoric. On Tuesday January 11, Olbermann was responding to his critics. “Since the shooting [some] on the right have put forward the absolutely incoherent narrative that suggestions from the left that the right’s rhetoric might have real world consequences is out of line—because those remarks might have a real world consequence.” Olbermann also cited what he called Fox News boss Roger Ailes’ suggestion that his own network should “turn [the rhetoric] down.” The topic of political discourse was less prominent elsewhere in the media. It accounted for 21% of the online news studied concerning the shooting. And it filled 18% of the front-page newspaper coverage devoted to the shooting and 18% in network morning and evening news on the story. But the tone of public discourse was a more significant focus of the discussion in new media. According to a Crimson Hexagon analysis that began two days earlier than the NCI data (on January 8), 29% of the conversation about the Giffords story measured on blogs and Twitter focused on public discourse. Crimson Hexagon technology analyzes online media by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. Using Crimson Hexagon, PEJ was also able to analyze the tone of this conversation. Here, considerably more of the discussion about political rhetoric featured the left blaming the right rather than the other way around. According to the analysis from January 8-16, a full 59% of the commentary in blogs, Twitter and social media involved liberals blaming conservatives for their tone. That was more than twice the amount of the discussion—28%—that involved conservatives criticizing the left or defending themselves. Typical of that commentary was a tweet by someone calling himself David D: “Funny, how Billy Oreillys of the world want rappers to watch their words but wanna give themselves & Sarah palin a pass.” Another tweeter, RVAREgal wrote, “Things that make me rethink free speech—Palin, Limbaugh, Robertson, Beck, et al.” Though smaller in number, some conservatives did fire back. “Sorry, but can’t let Left MSM lie, smear, frame the debate, set their memes unopposed,” tweeted Barbara McMahon. In social media, the subject of public debate was followed closely by a discussion of the shooting incident itself, the aftermath, and the media’s coverage of it. That filled 27% of the social media conversation. The No. 3 topic in social media was Obama’s response to the incident, including his January 12 speech and the memorial service to the victims (22%). Obama’s Speech Helped Cool the Debate over Angry Words—to a Degree. In a January 12 speech witnessed by an estimated 30 million Americans, Barack Obama called for a change in the tone of political debate, asking citizens “to listen to each other more carefully” and “to sharpen our instincts for empathy.” The speech, and the reaction to it, proved to be significant newsmakers. In the mainstream press, that accounted for 9% of the coverage devoted to the shooting story for the week, making it the No. 4 storyline. It was a bigger story in social media, where the president’s role, his speech and the memorial service accounted for 22% of the conversation. The address generated largely positive reviews from media pundits on the left, and perhaps more notably, from the right as well. On Fox News, columnist Charles Krauthammer showered the speech with praise, calling elements of it “inspirational.” Writing for the National Review online, Jim Geraghty called it a “terrific speech.” Even Fox News and radio talk host Glen Beck declared that Obama gave “a tremendous speech.” It will take time to determine whether the president succeeding in helping douse the heated rhetoric and fiery partisanship in Washington. At least some observers thought it had brought a temporary halt to hostilities. “I think it does end the episode we’ve had for the last three or four days of this rancorous, and I think, malicious debate,” ventured Krauthammer. That may have been a little optimistic. In the mainstream media, Obama’s speech halted the focus on the nature of political discourse for just one day. The day following his speech, the issue of rhetoric dropped to 11% of the Tucson coverage, while attention to his speech accounted for 31%. But by the next day, January 14, the public discourse discussion had once again emerged as the top storyline (21%) while coverage of Obama’s speech plunged to 3% of the newshole. But reaction to the memorial service and president’s appeal did seem to have more staying power in social media. It filled 32% of the social media conversation the day after he spoke and between 24% and 27% for the rest of the week. That was enough to push the focus on political rhetoric down from as high as 39% earlier in the week to between 24% and 28% the rest of the week. A Tough Week for Sarah Palin in both Social and Mainstream Media Almost as soon as news of the January 8 shooting surfaced, former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was drawn into the narrative. At first, that was largely by critics who blamed her—and her now famous map with its crosshairs imposed over Giffords’ district—as contributing factors to the violence. Palin entered the story more actively on January 12, the morning of the President’s speech, when she released a video that accused her critics of a “blood libel,” a controversial term that invoked the anti-Semitic charge that Jews used the blood of Christian children as part of religious practice. For the week, Palin was the fifth biggest mainstream newsmaker in the shooting coverage, registering as a dominant newsmaker in 4% of all the stories on that subject. She trailed only Loughner (25%), Giffords (19%), Obama (12%) and Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year old girl killed in the attack (5%). (To register as a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) And in both the mainstream media and the online conversation, much of Palin’s coverage was unflattering. The Crimson Hexagon analysis shows that from January 8-16, bloggers and Twitter users were considerably more critical than supportive of her—by almost a 3-1 margin. Indeed, 58% of the social media commentary that involved Palin was negative, compared with 21% positive and 21% neutral. And a substantial portion of that was fueled by the response to her “blood libel” video.
“What I got from Ms. Palin’s eight minutes of fame was the noticeable absence of regard for the victims. She seemed to be in self defense mode (as usual),” blogged bruce on AOL Answers, adding the he didn’t think Palin “is a deep enough thinker to understand the meaning of [blood libel.]” “Of course Palin is going to say something ridiculously offense like ‘blood libel’—this is how she stays rich and famous,” tweeted Maia Appleby. In the mainstream press, a media narrative that was generally sympathetic to Palin’s view that she had been unfairly blamed for the Tucson violence seemed to change after the video’s release. The non-partisan website Politico, which relentlessly tracks winners and losers in the political wars, declared that the video demonstrated Palin “has little interest—or capacity—in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics.” And conservative columnist Ross Douthat warned Palin that, “You were an actual politician once (remember that?), but you’re becoming the kind of caricature that your enemies have always tried to make of you.” The Gun Control Debate Gets Little Traction Amid the many storylines that emerged in the past week, one was notable mostly for its absence. While some lawmakers talked about new legislation, the issue of gun control generated only modest coverage. In the mainstream press, the gun control storyline accounted for only 5% of all the Tucson coverage studied from January 10-16—garnering about one-fifth the attention the political rhetoric issue generated. In the online media analysis, the numbers were strikingly similar. Only 4% of the conversation about the shootings on Twitter and blogs was related to gun control. A day-by-day breakdown of both social and traditional media coverage reveals that the gun control debate never had a real spike, never exceeding 7% of the shootings newshole on any given day. One reason may be the sense that political positions on gun control are set and there seemed little prospect of that changing because of Tucson. A January 14 story in the Connecticut newspaper, the Hour, reported on Congressman Jim Himes’ concerns that “the topic has become very political with one extreme wishing to ban guns entirely and the other extreme labeling any measures to restrict gun ownership a ‘slippery slope’ toward eliminating Americans’ Constitutional rights.”
And last weekend on “Meet the Press” Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said: "Let's be honest here. There haven't been the votes in the Congress for gun control. We have had some victories ... But make no mistake about it: The changes are hard." The Rest of the Week’s News No other story in the mainstream media came remotely close to matching the level of coverage devoted to the Arizona shootings last week. And much of the rest of the news agenda was devoted to natural disasters and dangerous weather. The No. 2 story, at 5% of the newshole, was the winter storm that blasted through the South and Northeast. It was followed closely by coverage of the economy, which dipped last week to 5% from 10% the previous week. The No. 4 story was the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, (4%), which hit the one-year anniversary mark last week. And the fifth-biggest story was about another natural disaster, the Australia flooding, at 3% of the newshole. About this report 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 1,000 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. For the study of Blogs and Twitter PEJ used software provided by Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon’s software analyzes the conversation online from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Forums and mainstream news sources. According to Crimson Hexagon: “Our technology analyzes the entire social internet (blog posts, forum messages, Tweets, etc.) by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics.” Information on the tool itself can be found at www.crimsonhexagon.com and the in depth methodologies can be found here http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/products/whitepapers/. The time frame for the analysis is January 8 to 16, 2011. For the analysis of both blogs and Twitter PEJ first had to narrow the universe to relevant posts and used the following list of keywords in a Boolean search: Giffords OR Loughner OR (Arizona AND shot) OR (Arizona AND shooting) OR (AZ AND shot) OR (AZ AND shooting) OR (Arizona AND death) OR (Arizona AND dead) OR (AZ AND death) OR (AZ AND dead) OR Tucson OR assassinate OR gunman OR (Christina AND Green) OR Gabby OR (Judge AND Roll) OR Dupnik OR vitriol OR (hate AND speech) OR Palin OR libel OR thrive OR memorial OR Obama Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
For the week of January 3-7, fully 32% of the news links on blogs were about the 112th Congress, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The same subject was also the leading topic in the traditional press last week. The time period covered by this NMI report ended on January 7, a day before the shootings in Arizona that killed six people and left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition. That event, as it did in the mainstream press, consumed the online community almost immediately after it happened. For a chronology of the media's initial reporting on that event, click here. For the week ending January 7, an eclectic mix of stories generated attention in the blogosphere, including two Beltway political stories, two involving the entertainment industry and another that some people were calling, half-jokingly, a possible sign of the apocalypse. The discussion about the new Congress largely followed party lines. Conservatives cheered the decision by Republicans to read the Constitution on the House floor and were hopeful about the party's plan to undo some of Obama's agenda. Liberals focused on plans by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to spend much of the next two years investigating the Obama White House-an administration he called one of the most corrupt. They saw that claim as absurd and argued that the plan to spend so much time investigating the White House showed that Republicans were not much interested in governing. The No. 2 subject in blogs last week was the death of actress Anne Francis, who starred in movies and on television in the 1950's and 60's. Bloggers largely remembered her as the sultry TV detective Honey West while sharing videos and pictures of her in that role. This continues a trend on blogs when the passing of Hollywood icons, such as Leslie Nielsen a month ago, often generates substantial attention and nostalgia. An audio interview on the BBC with openly gay actor Rupert Everett about the problems that homosexuals face in the film industry was third at 10%. Fourth (at 9%) was the news that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was leaving his job as spokesman to help direct Obama's re-election campaign. This subject also generated attention in the mainstream media last week as part of a series of changes in White House staffing. And a CNN report about a mysterious event on New Year's Eve when thousands of red-winged blackbirds fell dead in an Arkansas town was fourth at 7%. The precise cause of the mass kill is unknown, although experts suggest that fireworks or weather caused large-scale trauma which led to the deaths. A number of bloggers contemplated the possible causes while others implied, often sarcastically, that this was a sign of the apocalypse. On Twitter, the pattern of technology stories, and most notably a fascination with Apple, dominated the news agenda last week.
A column on TechCrunch predicting seven new technologies that will "rock" in 2011 was second, at 10%. Included in the predictions are the growth of web videos on television and the expanded use of mobile wallets. Twitter was the third largest subject (at 6%). The attention was split between two stories. One was the unveiling of a complicated equation that would rank accounts by the number of followers. The other was a story about the rapid growth of an unusual hashtag, #LessAmbitiousMovies, a meme that encourages tweeters to tweak the titles of popular films to make them seem less ambitious in scope. Examples included "Prancing with Wolves," and "The Goddaughter." The announcement that Skype has acquired the video streaming service Qik for approximately $100 million was No. 4, at 6%. And stories about the rapid growth of the web site Quora, a social networking site that describes itself as "A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it," were fifth, also at 6%. The 112th Congress One of the first acts of the new GOP-led House was a recitation of the Constitution that lasted about two hours. Conservative bloggers approved. "The US Constitution has stood the test of time and has held firm as the supreme law of the United States for over 223 years!" wrote Chris at The "Right" Solutions. "This will be a good civics lesson for all members of Congress!" Most conservatives, however, focused on criticism of the reading from Democratic lawmakers that appeared in a Washington Post article. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), for example, called the act "ritualistic" and "total nonsense" intended to claim the document for Republicans. "Let's see now...Nadler doesn't believe the Constitution is important, yet he takes an oath to defend it," blogged Pragmatic American. "Perhaps, Mister Nadler, if you can't uphold your own oath, you should find another career?" "Reactions like this [by Nadler] are exactly why Republicans are now the majority party in the House. Democrats neither believe in the principles of the Constitution, nor its authority to govern the activities of the Congress, nor the LIMITATIONS that it imposes on selfish politicians like Jerrold Nadler," condemned Speaker's Journal. Conversely, liberal bloggers focused on Republican plans to launch six major investigations of the White House in their first three months in office and Rep. Issa's claim that Obama's administration is one of the most corrupt. "This man [Issa] is a two faced idiot," declared Dajo at Why Not Progressive? "His own party is responsible for the enormous issues we are facing but he's blaming the Obama administration." "What did the Obama administration do...take us to war based on DEAD WRONG intelligence to look for WMD that was NOT there without an exit plan? Did they raid the surplus to give the rich a tax cut? Did they out an undercover CIA agent? Did they spy on Americans without a warrant?" asked Redeye's Front Page. "Can't wait to see the proof of the Obama administrations corruption."* Some conservatives thought the investigations were appropriate. "What, an administration based on Chicago-style politics corrupt, well if the shoe fits," expressed Scared Monkeys. "The reason for the investigations is oversight, don't we really need accounts to see where the tax payer dollars have gone, not attorneys who will simply obstruct what happened?" Much of the online conversation was about the GOP's agenda as a whole and whether Republicans had been given a mandate by voters in the last election. Many bloggers gave their opinions while citing a Washington Post profile of new House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) or news that Republicans had a 20-day plan to undo much of Obama's agenda. "In November's mid-term elections, Democrats were rejected and rejected big time. Republicans come to town with clear mandates to repeal Obamacare, and repair the damage to our health care system it has inflicted, or threatened to inflict," explained Buddy at Political Truth and Fact. "Democrats are desperate to ignore the expressed will of the American people, and are girding themselves for a major fight." But more than a few voices expressed concern that the change in power would have no impact at all. "Blah, blah, blah...from both sides!..They all read right out of the same play-book...and it always has the same ending!" complained Rikk Keith. "The only thing that becomes important to them, is the game of politics. It's apparent because very little get's done in Washington. And now, with the party of ‘NO' in control of the house, I see more of NOthing getting done." YouTube A distinctly non-political subject was the most popular news-related video on YouTube last week-an excerpt from a BBC documentary about polar bears. Filmmakers built so-called spy cameras into objects that were supposed to resemble blocks of ice, but the polar bears began playing with the objects once they noticed them moving. The playful interaction between the bears and the cameras, which ultimately led to the breaking of the equipment, was viewed more than 1.1 million times. The video also demonstrates a common dilemma with online videos relating to copyright issues. Despite being such a popular video, it was removed from YouTube due to a request from BBC Worldwide because it was copyrighted material. The video continues to exist, however, on the BBC's own site.
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press. PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today's news information narrative and in shaping 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. 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. A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket, which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with no indication of when it might resume. The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and analyzing the results. For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme. Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24 hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the previous 48 hours.) The Project also tracks the most popular news videos on YouTube each week. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings. Note: PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is Monday through Friday.
At least until the shocking weekend shooting of an Arizona Congresswoman dramatically altered the narrative, the prospects of political conflict from a new Congress and changes in the White House dominated last week’s news agenda. For the week of January 3-9, coverage of the 112th Congress—with a GOP-led House—as well incoming officeholders around the country filled 21% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence. One related subject (the No. 3 story at 8%) involved changes in the Obama Administration, most notably the naming of former Commerce Secretary William Daley as chief of staff. Another (No. 4 at 7%) was the health care debate, with most of the coverage focused on now-postponed Republican plans to introduce a bill to repeal last year’s health care reform law. Taken together, coverage devoted largely to the political realignment in the wake of the November 2 elections accounted for more than one-third (36%) of the overall newshole last week. But the political world, along with the rest of the country, was rocked by the January 8 shootings in Tucson that killed six people, including U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, and critically wounded Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The first hour of coverage included conflicting reports with a number of news organizations erroneously reporting that Rep. Giffords had died (see sidebar for more). The tragedy occurred too late in the week to register as a top story in PEJ’s News Coverage Index, accounting for 1% of the coverage examined. But a rapidly developing storyline examined whether it would serve to moderate the angry and polarizing rhetoric surrounding public policy issues. In that respect, the Tucson rampage altered a narrative that, for much of the week, had focused on the prospect of heightened tensions and partisanship between a Democratic president and a Republican House. Indeed one of the events expected to trigger such a clash, the scheduling of a January 12 House vote to repeal the health care bill, was delayed in the wake of the Arizona carnage. The week’s No. 2 story, at 10% of the newshole, was coverage of the economy, which ranged in subject from new unemployment numbers and grim state finances to the debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Rounding out the top five list, (No. 5 at 4%) was the fallout from the controversial videos made by Navy Captain Owen Honors, who was relieved of command last week. A New Day in Washington Last week’s coverage of the changing of the guard in Washington was part pomp, part circumstance and part substance. The formal symbol of the new political environment was the swearing in of new Republican House Speaker John Boehner. The Washington Post noted the stylistic differences between Boehner and his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi: “Nancy Pelosi brought camera crews and dignitaries into her childhood Baltimore neighborhood where a street was being renamed in her honor, while John Boehner is bringing his 11 siblings from working-class Ohio to Washington for a private reunion,” a January 3 story noted. “Austerity is the theme of Boehner's ascendancy to House speaker this week…in stark contrast to the more lavish festivities that accompanied Democrat Pelosi's swearing-in four years ago.” It took only hours for the narrative to move to the potential for increasing conflict between the new Congress and the White House. On John King’s January 3 CNN program, pundit Roland Martin dismissed fellow commentator’s John Avlon’s suggestion that the productive lame duck session of Congress might presage cooperation and bi-partisanship to come. “I think John Avlon’s theme song is ‘we are one.’ It's like ‘oh, it's so wonderful and nice’”… But come January 5th, it ain't happening,” Martin asserted.
The looming prospect of House investigations that would embarrass the White House was another theme. A January 5 report from Andrea Mitchell on the NBC newscast examined incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell Issa, who on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show called Obama “one of the most corrupt presidents of modern times.” “He’s the new cop on the beat, Darrell Issa, the Republican’s top watchdog, potentially the Obama Administration’s worst nightmare,” Mitchell reported. Issa, she said, planned “as many as 280 hearings in the first year,” on subjects ranging from the stimulus package to WikiLeaks. Not all of the stories suggested Democrats would be merely reacting. A January 6 New York Times article reported Democrats planned to “mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s health care legislation” in response to Boehner’s decision “to schedule a vote next Wednesday on a complete repeal of the health care law...Senior Democratic officials said their effort would be managed by a rapid response operation [that will] monitor Republican claims, send out fact-checks and deploy a team of surrogates to get their views on television.” A good deal changed on Saturday. The Arizona shootings prompted Republicans to push back that scheduled health care vote, and on the weekend TV talk shows, representatives from both sides talked about the need for more civility in politics. But there was plenty of skepticism that a kinder gentler dynamic would take hold for long. As early as Sunday, January 9, a posting on the Wall Street Journal site reported that “Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, threw doubt on lawmakers’ promises to restore civility to the debate because they have a tendency to fall aside once the news fades. ‘It’s sort of like New Year’s resolutions,’ he said on ‘This Week.’” A White House Shakeup and a Battle Rejoined The No. 3 subject, at 8%, was coverage of the Obama administration—which focused largely on a series of personnel moves, such as the appointment of William Daley as chief of staff, the naming of Gene Sperling to head the national economic council and the announced departure of press secretary Robert Gibbs. The White House changes got the most attention in the two media sectors that include the ideological talk shows, cable (12%) and radio (16%). Daley’s selection got the most coverage. A media consensus quickly formed that Obama was trying to shore up his centrist credential and rebuild bridges. “With extensive experience as a businessman and Wall Street executive, Daley comes to the administration positioned to help the president rebuild his frayed relationship with the corporate world,” the January 7 Washington Post declared. Coverage of health care reform, the week’s No. 4 story at 7%, focused in large part, on plans to introduce a bill in the House to roll back the controversial legislation that passed in March of 2010. The subject generated the most attention, 14%, in the cable sector. An Associated Press story on January 4 noted that a Republican repeal effort would face significant legislative obstacles and entail some political risk. “Ultimately, Obama still has his veto pen, and Republicans aren't anywhere close to the two-thirds majorities they would need to override,” the story stated. ‘Repeal and replace’ worked as a campaign slogan to motivate voters concerned about the growing reach of government under Obama. But a single-minded focus on repeal could backfire as a Republican governing strategy. Polls show that some parts of the law are popular, and many Americans would have wanted even bigger changes.” Newsmakers of the Week
The third-biggest newsmaker (4%) was Navy Captain Owen Honors, who was relieved of his command of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise following the discovery of videos he had made featuring lewd and crude content. Also making the top five list were two more key players in last week’s Washington reshuffling. Newly named Obama chief of staff William Daley was No. 4, registering in 3% of the stories, followed by outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at 2%. John Wheeler, a former Pentagon official whose body was found in a Delaware landfill, was also at 2%. About the NCIPEJ’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 1,000 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
For the week of December 27-31, 31% of the news links on blogs were about the economy, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Only once before in 2010 did the economy generate this much attention among bloggers-from October 4-8 three different economic stories made up a third (33%) of links. The week of June 14-18 also came close at 29%, largely in response to President Obama's urging Congress to approve state and local government aid. If the economy was the overwhelmingly dominant subject among bloggers last week, the buzz among Twitter users was all about Apple (the No. 1 story at 25% of links), and more specifically its iPad. Indeed the most linked-to story was an attempt to vet rampant rumors about an expected second generation iPad. The No. 2 story on blogs last week was the news about NBA star Gilbert Arenas' rocky relationship and potential breakup with his long-time girlfriend, Laura Govan (12%). The other top stories in the blogosphere had a distinct Beltway angle to them. The third biggest was about members of Congress getting donations from the same companies they are writing legislation for (7%), followed by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton topping the list of most-admired people (6%), and an op-ed by George Will urging congress to pass the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act(6%). Economy Two stories dominated the economic discussion on blogs: The Bureau of Labor Statistics changing the way it measures long-term unemployment and how more banks failed in the U.S. in 2010 than in any year since 1992. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is raising the upper limit on how long someone can be listed as having been jobless from two years to five years. Previously, the longest time period that someone could be classified as unemployed was "99 weeks or over." But starting in January 2011, people will be able to report that they have been unemployed for "260 weeks and over." The change appears to be designed to better track long-term unemployment of U.S. workers. While some of the blogosphere commenting on this was particularly wonky, many took the opportunity to voice concern about the government. "The fed has to re-write how it reports unemployment? Nice job Obama and the Democrats. Normally I might feel bad piling on but I also know they would spare no mercy where there a Republican in the White House and a Republican majority in congress. This is very telling," wrote Pink Lloyd's Wall. "maybe we will get true numbers now, but I doubt it.... it is not in the best interest of the govt...." said Paul from Two Years on UC, My Story Being Out of Work & Other Economic News.* Still, a few others thought that it was a positive change that would provide a better way to measure the economy: "The government will need better statistics in order to explain to the american people why their standard of living is in full decline. And why taxes must go up to support those millions of under and unemployed americans who live on the margins of society. No one has a clue how to fix the broken global economy but you can rest assured that statisticians will find better methods of documenting the unfolding horror," wrote Lugh Lampfhota of Bruig Na Boinde. The other major economic storyline was about the 157 bank failures in 2010. Most blogs linked to a Washington Post article about the subject without any further discussion, often in a news round-up style. But one blogger opined about the piece: "After watching ‘It's a Wonderful Life,' that Capra classic that gets us every time, we are reminded of the bygone runs on banks and savings-and-loan crises. The worst one in recent memory was actually fairly recent, in 1992 to be exact. That is, until 2010," blogged John Boone at the Lipman Times. Gilbert Arenas and Laura Govan A December 28 Washington Post story about former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas' personal relationship struck a particular chord with the online audience. The article explained that Arenas cut off communication and funds from his girlfriend Laura Govan after being traded to the Orlando Magic. Govan, who is four months pregnant, has been dating Arenas on-and-off for the past nine years. The couple has three other children together already. Most blogs that picked up on the story were celebrity or sports gossip blogs. Several noted that even though the article reported that the couple had broken up in November, Govan was seen recently at one of Arenas' games. "I can't really muster up any response to this news that Arenas has supposedly stopped talking to his fiancee for the last month. Apparently, they broke up in November, and he's cut off contact with her, according to her publicist. That doesn't sound good. It's worth noting, though, that Arenas' fiancee was in attendance when the Wizards went to Los Angeles earlier this month," wrote Mike Prada at Bullets Forever. Some bloggers were critical of both parties: "This isn't the first time Gilbert has done some foul ish like this. But, at the same time, is Laura THIS desperate to be a ‘baller's wife' that she will remain an eternal fiance and keep popping out kids and not have any type of back up plan for money...despite the fact this is not the first time this has happened? This ish is just pure foolery," wrote Natasha at the YBF, a celebrity gossip site. "Damn, I can see leaving her," wrote LoLo at Manifesto Part 2, "But they've got three kids and one on the way. C'mon son!" The Big Lead simply wrote, "Gilbert - you may want to call your wife and kids..." Obama and Clinton Admired (and Attacked) The news that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton topped the list of most-admired in a USA Today/Gallup survey drew a largely dismissive response from bloggers who were clearly not among those admirers. "So President Obama is USA Today/Gallup's most admired man for two years running. Big surprise. I think it's rather funny how the guy is constantly getting hammered in the polls for the last two years and then all of a sudden he's the most admired man in America," wrote POH Diaries. "I think they only polled inpatients at the nation's psychiatric institutions," wrote Scott Lazarowitz of ReasonAndJest.com. At least one fan of Obama wrote about the article, "I'm certain this will make a few Obama haters' heads explode..." blogged the Fifth Column.
In first place, (with 25%) were stories about Apple products, and this week the iPad was the topic of choice. By far, the most linked-to story was a Mashable article that debunked or affirmed rumors about the second generation iPad expected this spring. Other frequently linked-to stories included buzz about new Apple products expected to appear at the consumer electronics expo, a piece about a new $1,000 iPad app that helps users prepare for the bar exam, and an article about iPhone and iPad users suing Apple because apps on the gadgets leak data. Most of these stories were simply retweeted by Twitter users, with some noting the particular iPad rumors they were most excited about. End-of-the-year recaps were also popular Twitter fodder (15%), with a story about Facebook unseating Google as both the most-searched item and the most-visited website in 2010. A Wired article entitled 2010: The Year the Internet Went to War was also tweeted several times. The No. 4 story (6%) was a piece that questioned whether HP was going to release a new ultrathin laptop since it had just discounted its current model. The other two top stories were ostensibly about sports and travel. But both had a high tech twist. At No. 3 (6%) was a story that the Indonesian president had protested Malaysian supporters' alleged use of laser beams to distract players in an Indonesia vs. Malaysia soccer match. While most of the tweets were non-English, at least one Twitter user referred to the event as "laser gate." The No. 5 story that (with 4% of links) was a funny photo from TechCrunch of an ad for a hostel called Hostel Microsoft in India. According to the ad, Hostel Microsoft apparently offers a "separate block and campus for ladies and gents" and was set to open January 1. The hostel does not appear to have any affiliation with the Microsoft Corporation. YouTube YouTube ended the year with a distinctly international flavor. The most-viewed clip of the week was footage of a Romanian man, Adrian Sobaru, throwing himself from the balcony in the Romanian parliament in protest of the government cutting payments for his disabled child. He was not seriously injured, but ended up with facial fractures. Sobaru wore a t-shirt that said "You've killed our future" and addressed Prime Minister Emil Boc while jumping, screaming "Boc, you've taken away the rights of our children." The second most-viewed video was of a leopard attacking villagers in India, followed by a German-language video of young men making fun of the Titanic II movie. In fourth place was a news story about a two-headed boy born in Tirupati, India. Wrapping up the top five YouTube videos was a clip of P. Diddy's daughter singing Feliz Navidad and playing the piano.
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press. PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today's news information narrative and in shaping 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. 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. A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket, which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with no indication of when it might resume. The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and analyzing the results. For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme. Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24 hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the previous 48 hours.) The Project also tracks the most popular news videos on YouTube each week. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings. Note: PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is Monday through Friday. Emily Guskin for PEJ
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For the week of December 20-24, more than a third (35%) of the news links on blogs were about the controversy, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Most of the conversation last week, however, focused on an investigation launched by the CIA. But rather than discussing the consequences of such an inquiry, bloggers centered on the name of the panel - the WikiLeaks Task Force - which resulted in the acronym WTF - a phrase more commonly known for its usage as part of internet slang. "And the most aptly named task force ever, award goes to...drum roll please....Wikileaks Task Force a.k.a WTF," joked Word Vomit. "Personally I could care less but how freaking cool would it be to flash a badge and say WTF mate?!"* "What impact the WTF will have in this very broad debate over Wikileaks remains to be seen," added Drew Wilson at Zero Paid. "In the mean time, I'll be trying not to laugh every time WTF is brought up for the next little while - a challenging task to say the least." "I'd imagine the CIA wouldn't be having so much fun with this issue if their files were caught up in the Wikileaks backwash, but the CIA refused to put its information on SIPRNET and spared itself the damage," wrote Ron Hogan at Popular Fidelity. Another discussed element this week was the BBC interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Most bloggers came to Assange's defense - criticizing the interview as overly personal and expressing disbelief in the sex crimes accusations Assange is facing. In previous weeks, the overwhelming position online has been in support of WikiLeaks and notion of transparency. That subtext pervaded last week as well despite the criminal charges facing the controversial figure. "The interviewer is SO obnoxious you want to knock his block off," complained neufneuf referring to the personal nature of some of the questions asked of Assange. "In the BBC's interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, we learn that he's a martyr, a player, a gentleman, perfectly happy with himself, and oh yes - people associated with Wikileaks have been assassinated. The interviewer doesn't even blink at that one; no follow-up question," noted Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs. While not the major focus for bloggers, some supporters of WikiLeaks expressed their belief that Assange was innocent of the charges. "It should go without saying that I do not approve of Assange's behavior if the allegations against him are true. Nevertheless, I still believe the allegations are very convenient for the powers that be," declared Sky Dancing. "Many people have noted that one can support WikiLeaks as an organization without supporting Assange as an individual, and that's certainly true," argued The Freedom Bulletin. "But I support both ...Although obviously not the most pure and chaste person in the world, he is brave, intelligent, principled, and honorable...and not a rapist." "Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has my vote for the 2010 Sexiest Man Alive," pronounced Lothlaurien's Lore. "Because he is a freedom fighter. It doesn't get any sexier than freedom." The Repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" The second largest subject on blogs, with 15% of the links, was the Senate's passage of a bill to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy requiring gay and lesbian troops to conceal their sexual orientation. Bloggers overwhelmingly cheered the action as a positive step against discrimination. "‘Don't ask, don't tell' has been repealed. It was a long time coming, but it happened!!!" cheered Jennifer at Ooh Fancy That. "I have long believed that once gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly and proudly in its armed forces, other types of discrimination against them in the USA will begin to crumble," applauded Donald Philip Walker at exaro. "A nation that revers its men and women in uniform, as does the USA, can hardly then foster or tolerate prejudice against those same men and women." "Now people of all sexual orientation can serve their Country and those who cannot serve next to fellow gay soldiers can turn in their commission," pronounced Native and Natural Born Citizenship Explored. "Bye bye and good riddance." While in the small minority, a few online voices opposed the development. "I'm not celebrating this decision," wrote Shane Vander Hart at Caffeinated Thoughts. "When our men and women are in combat we shouldn't be treating the military as a social experiment...The fact is the military has discriminated for years. It has to have standards, and no not everybody can or should serve. Congress has harmed military readiness, not helped." Other Major Stories The third largest story, with 9% of the week's links, was another story featuring free speech online. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his plans to impose broadcast-like regulations on the internet. Critics charge that the rules will restrict freedoms. Fourth (at 7%) was a Washington Post article about an environmental study that found the probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium in the drinking water of 31 out of 35 major cities examined. That was followed by another Washington Post story (at 6%) about the administration's actions surrounding Guantanamo Bay. According to the report, the Obama administration is preparing an executive order to formalize indefinite detention without trial for some detainees despite previously announced plans to close the military detention center.
The most linked to subject, with 21% of the news links posted in Tweets, was a column by Mashable writer Vadim Lavrusik predicting 10 major developments in news media for 2011. Among his predictions is the expansion of the "leakification" of journalism following the example of WikiLeaks. He also foresees the death of the "foreign correspondent" and that news organizations will get smarter with social media and tablet devices. The No. 2 story (at 10%) was a Mashable list of 40 resources available for users of social media. The list includes a wide range of pages from a video on how to use Twitter's advanced search functions to suggestions for gloves well-suited for users of touch screen gadgets. Also at 10% were two stories about Apple applications. One was news that the mapping company TomTom released an updated iPhone app where users can make changes to street names and directions, and then share those changes with others. The other story was about the movie ticketing company Fandango's release of an app that allows iPad users to view trailers and buy tickets from their device. A CNET giveaway of 5 prototypes of Google's highly anticipated Chrome OS Netbook even before the product is available for sale was fourth at 9%. That was followed by a Mashable list of rugged gadgets able to survive the rigors of the outdoors at 7%. YouTube The two most viewed news clips on YouTube last week were of the same dramatic and violent event. On Tuesday, December 14, a school board meeting for the Bay District Schools in Florida was interrupted by a gun wielding man named Clay Duke. After a few tense minutes, Duke was shot by a security official. He then turned the gun on himself and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Despite firing at the board members at close range, Duke did not injure anyone. The drama of the encounter was caught on live video and available on the internet quickly. (A CNN report about the incident is available here.) A number of television stations showed segments of the video, although networks differed in their treatment of the most violent moments. A link to the live video is available here. WARNING: The video contains graphic images.
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press. PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today's news information narrative and in shaping 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. 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. A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket, which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with no indication of when it might resume. The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and analyzing the results. For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme. Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24 hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the previous 48 hours.) The Project also tracks the most popular news videos on YouTube each week. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings. Note: PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is Monday through Friday.
From December 12-19, the economy accounted for 26% of the newshole studied in the weekly news index of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is somewhat less than the 40% focused on the economy the week before, but is consistent with recent weeks of intense media attention to the subject. More than any other issue, the tax bill drove last week’s economic coverage, accounting for about two-thirds of it. A mix of other items, including the omnibus spending bill, the debate over earmarks, and news about holiday retail sales, were factors, too. While the economy overshadowed all other stories, the No. 2 news event, according to PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index, was a Virginia federal judge’s challenge to the U.S. health care law. For the first time in many months, the debate about health care policy reappeared, accounting for 5% of the newshole. At No. 3 was the death of Richard Holbrooke, a senior U.S. diplomat who had played a key role in working with leaders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke’s sudden death from heart problems, and the review of his life as a leading diplomat for Democratic Administrations since the 1960s, filled another 5% of the newshole. Also at 5% was the U.S. conflict in Afghanistan, spurred in part by a White House report which indicated that troop withdrawals could begin in mid-2011, on schedule. Finally, at No. 5, was the Wikileaks saga, now in its third week among the top five news stories. This week, journalists reported on the details of the charges and bail hearing for the group’s leader, Julian Assange, who was brought up on charges of sexual misconduct. Obama’s Tax Cuts The New York Times called it “sweeping.” In the Washington Post, it was “the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade.” Much of the coverage also depicted the outcome as a potential harbinger of the political deal-making that might now mark the future of the Obama Presidency.
Before last week, the bill itself—which extends the tax breaks for two years—was the subject of intense debate and high emotions on Capitol Hill. But last week, as the Senate then the House passed the bill, and by Friday’s presidential signing, a sense of the inevitable seemed to set in among angry Democrats. Reporting for the Today Show, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell said on Monday, December 13, that “it now appears that some of the opposition from House liberals who don’t want to see this deal may not be enough to scuttle it.” That would indeed be the case, as NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd noted Friday, December 17. “They (the Democrats) grumbled behind the scenes, and you certainly had a few members of House progressives get upset publicly, but you didn’t see the leaders coming out and hitting back at the White House. I think they’re realizing they have no choice but to take a back seat.” Many analysts noted the absence of Democratic House leaders at the bill signing ceremony, as well as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s presence. And some vocal Democratic legislators continued to bemoan the bill. One of these, New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, told Harry Smith on the CBS Early Show on December 17 that “overall, this was just not a very good deal for the American people, especially for the middle class and those struggling to make it.” He added, somewhat acerbically, “Bipartisanship has to be a means and not an ends, and I’m not sure the president gets that yet, but I’m going to work hard to try and make him a success.”
“The general prevailing view is ‘how do we know we couldn’t have gotten a better deal? We didn’t try.’ We just came in and, as I said, it seemed like this thing was negotiated from manila, because there was a lot of folding going on. That is a commonly held view: that the White House has not beaten back very hard.” But even Carville admitted that Obama had to consider the political realities of the moment. And some conservatives, as in weeks before, spoke in favorable terms about the president, suggesting that he may have emerged the winner after the weeks of arguing, politicking and voting on the tax bill. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post on December 17 called Obama the “new comeback kid….Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls,” said Krauthammer. “Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.” The Rest of the Week’s News U.S. healthcare legislation appeared for the first time in months as a top story when a federal judge in Virginia challenged the provision that all Americans are required to obtain health insurance under the Interstate Commerce clause. The last time health care reform achieved that much coverage was the week of March 29-April 4, 2010, the aftermath of the passage of the bill. That week, the subject accounted for 9% of the news, and was the No. 2 story. Part of the coverage last week was the potential for the law being overturned. It is being challenged in 20 states and many expect it may face a difficult time at the Supreme Court. A foxnews.com story from December 13 called last week’s challenge an “unmistakable and perhaps permanent pockmark on the face of the Obama administration.” Though he never became Secretary of State or reached a cabinet rank, Richard Holbrooke’s sudden death was a major news event. His obituary appeared atop the Washington Post on December 14, as well as the New York Times, which described Holbrooke’s “distinguished career” and his outsized personality. “Some called him a bully, and he looked the part: the big chin thrust out, the broad shoulders, the tight smile that might mean anything. To admirers, however, including generations of State Department protégés and the presidents he served, his peacemaking efforts were extraordinary.” As the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Holbrooke’s death—caused by a tear to his aorta—came during a week when that conflict appeared among the top stories in the media, at No. 4. Much of the Afghanistan coverage stemmed from a long-awaited White House report on the troop situation there, which was released on December 16. Barack Obama, in a statement upon the report’s release, said that enough progress was being made to warrant a withdrawal of U.S. troops on schedule in mid-2011. A Reuters story, published by Yahoo News, noted that the “upbeat public assessment of the war by U.S. military officials and the White House is not shared by America's intelligence agencies and aid agencies working in Afghanistan.” Also among the top stories was the Wikileaks trove of classified documents that were made available by the group’s leader, Julian Assange. Coverage last week focused on the proceedings related to Assange’s charges in Sweden. Newsmakers of the Week
The second most prominent figure in the news last week was Julian Assange, the leader of the Wikileaks organization, who faces criminal charges in Sweden related to alleged sexual coercion of two separate women. He was the lead newsmaker in 4% of all stories last week. The late diplomat Richard Holbrooke was next, appearing prominently in 3% of all stories last week. Many of the obituaries reflected on the mixed picture of Holbrooke—a supremely talented individual who nevertheless was sometimes hamstrung by his own rough edges. The No. 4 lead newsmaker last week was Clay Duke, the subject of a harrowing school board meeting standoff in Panama City, Florida. Duke, a “troubled, broke ex-con with bipolar disorder” in the words of the Associated Press, held up the school board on December 14. He fired at, but missed, the board members, before killing himself. The incident was caught on camera by local TV stations, there to report on the board meeting. Graphic video of the incident was posted on the Internet and, in some cases, broadcast on national television. Duke was the subject of 2% of stories last week. Tied for No. 5 were two members of the Madoff family, Bernard and his son Mark, in another tragic case where suicide made headlines. The younger Madoff was found hanging in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest for masterminding what is thought to be the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.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 1,000 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. Jesse Holcomb of PEJ
For the week of December 6-10, 15% of the news links on blogs were about the tax cut accord, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Public survey data from the Pew Research Center showed strong support across party lines for the agreed upon tax cuts. Within the active blogger community, though, greater nuance arose, revealing a tension among liberals as to whether to support the benefits the cuts will bring or criticize the President for the compromise. The majority of liberal bloggers criticized the President for accepting the deal which included an extension of the tax cuts for the richest 2% of the public. Some on the left, though, agreed with Obama that the deal was the best option he could get under the political circumstances. On the conservative side, bloggers were mostly satisfied with the compromise, though they directed little praise at Obama for his role in it. The other major story that drew attention last week was the continuing controversy over the leak of classified State Department cables by the website WikiLeaks. The subject was No. 1 on Twitter with 33% of the news links and tied for fourth on blogs (at 10%). In this debate, the social media community mostly countered broader public opinion. While 60% of those paying attention to the story said WikiLeaks harmed the public interest, the vast majority of bloggers and Twitterers defended the leaked material as a positive example of free speech. Supporters on Twitter, for example, agreed with an editorial by Wired editor Evan Hansen who expressed his view that WikiLeaks is good for America because the exposure of information strengthens democracy. They also highlighted a number of news stories that demonstrated a suspicion that powerful entities, such as the State Department and large corporations, were working to censor the flow of information. The Tax Cut Agreement Liberal bloggers were divided over whether to support Obama's tax cut compromise with the GOP. Most saw the tax cuts as a huge disappointment and that Obama was failing as a leader. "This is a huge defeat for this administration and, as one of the Democratic base I am extremely disappointed. As one moderate Democrat told me today, ‘For the first time I regret my vote for Obama. Not against McCain, but against Hillary,'" posted AstrosGirlKel at The Daily Hurricane. "Obama and his staff of Merry Dems: the (sales) gang that couldn't shoot straight," wrote Michael Anderson in a comment on Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report. "I understand that Obama has accomplished a huge amount during his first 2 years. But his marketing approach and communication skills are horrible. ‘Hello Kitty' has a better bully pulpit." Some, however, gave the President credit for reaching a deal. "I have to tell you, I'm not all that unhappy with the results. This is an actual compromise deal," admitted Susie Madrak at Suburban Guerilla. "First of all, the unemployed who are still collecting benefits get to heave a sigh of relief, because they're covered for the next 13 months...But that's not all. The package includes a shiny new one-year 2% payroll-tax cut for employees, which will stimulate the economy because the people who get it are the ones most likely to spend it." Conservatives generally agreed that the deal was the best move for the country. And some basked in what they saw as a victory over liberal ideology. "Ultimately, once the liberal base gets over its snit, this deal has the potential of being a good one for the President that may actually get this economy turned around," asserted Merv at Prairie Pundit. "After two years of life under the political heel of smug progressives, it feels good to know how much it is killing all of the leftists who thought Hope and Change meant a fundamental redistribution of wealth in the United States," added Psota at Free Will. There were some-outside clear party lines-who expressed pessimism about the entire political process. "What we've really witnessed is that each party is so concerned with implementing a small number of its policy initiatives so it can claim political victory," explained MSG at DOPP Lure Effect. "The end result of this intense politicking is that we, the voters, have the same tax levels, higher unemployment, and more debt piled on. Pardon me if I'm not giddy. Why is it that each time a party gets a win, the American people lose?" WikiLeaks For the second week in a row, the WikiLeaks issue was a major focus of social media. The first week, most of the conversation focused on Obama's response to the leaks, where commentators criticized him for not protecting security information. This week, bloggers and Twitterers turned to the question of whether the leaks were a positive example of free speech or a detrimental breach of national security. And in social media, the concept of transparency had far more supporters than detractors. Most bloggers linked to-and opposed-a December 7 Washington Post column by Marc Thiessen, which advocated for an attack on WikiLeaks by the U.S. government. "Thiessen sounds like a scared little man, afraid to stand up for himself," critiqued Park Silkenson at toodark.com. "So afraid that he's willing to put all his trust in the same government that has been embarrassed by the documents and videos of WikiLeaks, showing what terrible things the US government is capable of."* On Twitter, supporters of WikiLeaks shared a Wired editorial that declared the site to be good for America. "Wired spells out why Wikileaks is good for America," tweeted Shaminder Dulai. "I couldn't agree more!" "A free press-unfettered by concerns of nationalism-is a terrifying problem for elected governments and tyrannies alike," declared Kris Kotarski. Twitter users also drew attention to corporate or government entities they thought were working to slow the spread of information from WikiLeaks. Many, for example, pointed to a CNET story about a move by MasterCard to stop allowing payments to WikiLeaks in an effort to stop funding for the controversial site. "Freedom of Speech - priceless. For everything else, there's MasterCard," wrote Marc Silver. Others took note of a Mashable story about a State Department official who warned students at Columbia University that discussing the subject of WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could hurt their long-term job prospects. Some questioned why the heavily discussed issue was not listed as a "trending topic" on Twitter. "#Twitter, stop keeping #Wikileaks off the trending topics, because everyone knows it's hot right now so you really shouldn't suppress it," accused Robin Kanters. (Twitter denied that they were participating in any such act of censorship.) Opponents of WikiLeaks were rare online, although a BBC report stating that a list of important U.S. security facilities had been leaked as part of the cables gave a few people pause. "First evidence I've seen of them being irresponsible," admitted Goldmare. The Other Top Stories Beyond the WikiLeaks controversy, the other lead stories on Twitter last week were also technology-focused. All the stories were from the popular tech site Mashable and several of them involved a look back at 2010.
Google was No. 3 (at 12%) with two different articles. The first was a story about Google's yearly Zeitgeist report which revealed the most popular search terms of 2010. The second was an article about Google's new advertising platform for local businesses that is being tested in Portland, Oregon. Stories about Apple were fourth at 8% including a list of the top iPhone and iPad apps of the year according to Mashable. That was followed (at 7%) by news that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has signed onto the "giving pledge" created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to donate most of his wealth to charity. In the blogosphere, the other lead subjects beyond the tax cut deal were a combination of politics and the environment. The second most linked-to story (at 13%) was a critical editorial by the Washington Post about the recently released movie "Fair Game" based on the Valerie Plame/CIA leak affair. Third, at 12%, was news that Pope Benedict XVI announced he would gladly use a solar-powered popemobile as a sign of support for sustainable energy. Two very different stories tied for fourth at 10%, the WikiLeaks issue and a BBC article about conservationists in China who announced a breakthrough in successful mating of giant pandas which could allow them to be reintroduced into the wild. YouTube A television stunt gone wrong was the leading subject on YouTube last week. The two most viewed news videos last week both involved an accident that occurred on a live broadcast of a popular German game show called "Wetten Dass" ("Bet It"). A 23-year-old contestant named Samuel Koch attempted to jump a car using spring-loaded stilts known as "kangaroo shoes." However, Koch hit the car and crashed, suffering major injuries. His initial condition was considered life threatening, although he emerged from a 10 day coma earlier this week. Doctors say that he will never walk again. An outpouring of sympathy and prayers for Koch has emerged from throughout the world. The top video was an interview with the host of the game show, Thomas Gottschalk, on German television that includes a few clips from the program where the accident occurred.
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press. PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today's news information narrative and in shaping 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. 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. A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket, which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with no indication of when it might resume. The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and analyzing the results. For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme. Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24 hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the previous 48 hours.) The Project also tracks the most popular news videos on YouTube each week. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings. Note: PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is Monday through Friday.
Driven For the week of December 6-12, the story of the economy filled 40% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence weekly index of news coverage. That easily surpassed the previous week’s level (28%), which itself represented the most media attention to the topic since March 2009. Last week’s coverage focused almost entirely on one issue—the deal between Obama and Republicans extending the Bush-era tax cuts—which many analysts viewed as a clear sign that the president was moving to the center after the rebuke delivered in the midterm elections. Adding fuel to last week’s coverage was the dramatic, if temporary, Washington realignment set in motion by the agreement. While a number of Republicans lauded the deal—which also included an extension of unemployment benefits and several incentives for business—Obama found the liberal wing of his party in open revolt. Those strange politics help explain why ideological radio and cable talk hosts drove coverage last week. Indeed, the economy, particularly the tax deal, accounted for a whopping 77% of the airtime studied on the cable and radio talk shows. The No. 2 story, for the second week in a row, was the WikiLeaks saga in the aftermath of its release of sensitive State Department documents, which filled 10% of the newshole. The bulk of the coverage centered on the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on sexual assault charges and the cyber revenge taken by his supporters. The week’s third biggest story (at 5%), was the death of Elizabeth Edwards. The estranged wife of scandal plagued former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards died very quickly after the sobering news that doctors had advised her to discontinue her treatment for cancer. Afghanistan, which also accounted for 4% of the newshole, was the fourth biggest story of the week. That was followed, at 2%, by last week’s conviction of Brian David Mitchell for the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart in Utah. The Controversial Compromise “Tonight, dramatic breaking news, a deal brokered by President Obama and the newly empowered Republican congressional leaders,” Jon King declared on his December 6 CNN show. In response to the two-year extension of all of the Bush tax cuts, King reported, Democratic congressional leaders “are not thrilled. Some are angry. Some are frustrated.” That conflict made the economy the top story in all five sectors studied: network news (25%) newspapers (28%), online (30%), and particularly the two sectors most oriented to political battles. In cable news, it filled 58% of the time studied and on radio, where talk radio hosts fill their time, 67%.
There were several elements to the week’s economic coverage, including news of California’s fiscal crunch and some attention to the job market. But by far the dominant storyline, accoun The December 7 New York Times reported that “facing a Democratic revolt over his tax accord with Republicans,” Obama “defended the package…as a ‘good deal for the American people’” saying that “he had no choice but to compromise if he wanted to help the middle class.” The political cleavages on Capitol Hill and inside the Democratic Party played out in interesting ways in the neo-partisan media as well. As the story became fodder for the talk shows last week, it became a kind of ideological Sadie Hawkins Day, with traditional Obama foes lauding the president and his normal allies criticizing him. “Good for President Obama,” declared Bill O’Reilly on his December 7 Fox News Channel program. “He did the right thing for the country by backing away from raising taxes on the affluent and small business owners…But the ideologues on the far left are not interested in any of that.”
Meanwhile, liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz blasted Obama on December 8. “President Obama needs to break out of his bubble and listen to the people across the country who actually put him in office,” he said. “Democrats do feel betrayed when the Republicans seem to get everything they want…It‘s more of the same, more Bush policies.” On Sean Hannity’s Fox show the same night, focus group convener Frank Luntz talked about Republican voters responding more positively than Democrats to Obama’s remarks defending the tax agreement. “We’re about to make political history,” Luntz asserted. “I want you to watch the first time that Barack Obama actually does better among Republicans” than Democrats. That certainly held true for Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC prime-time host, who attacked the White House for its criticism of liberals unhappy with the deal. “The president today also turned withering fire on liberals, on the Democratic base, for expecting too much,” she stated, arguing that Obama had given up too much. “If you went into these negotiations with Republicans not wanting cheese on the pizza, you ended up ordering extra cheese for the pizza, right? Extra cheese with a side of cheese and some cheese dipping sauce for the side cheese.” Some of that heated rhetoric turned into action when House Democrats decided to table the compromise package, leading NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell to state on the December 9 that, “We’ve got a family feud among Democrats.” By week’s end, the fate of the measure was uncertain although the White House was expressing optimism it would eventually pass, given the politically unappetizing prospect of everyone’s taxes rising next year. And just as at least some liberal analysts suggested Obama had done reasonably well in the negotiations, one influential conservative commentator made the same point from the opposite perspective. “Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010—and House Democrats don't have a clue that he did,” wrote Charles Krauthammer on December 10. By getting agreement on package of about $1 trillion in tax cuts and spending increases, Obama “negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history.” And in a survey released on December 13, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that 60% of all respondents approved of the tax deal, including 63% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans. Week II of WikiLeaks The WikiLeaks episode was the week’s No. 2 story, although at 10%, coverage fell significantly from the previous week (16%). Last week, the story generated the most attention (17% of the newshole) online, a news sector that according to our content analysis, tends to be more oriented than others toward international news. The most dramatic development was the arrest of the man in charge and very much the public face of WikiLeaks. Julian Assange “who is wanted in Sweden over claims he sexually assaulted two women, was in Wandsworth prison tonight after a judge refused him bail at an extradition hearing in London,” reported a December 7 Guardian story posted on Google News. “The 39-year-old Australian, who denies the allegations, was driven away in a white prison van after an extraordinary one-hour hearing at City of Westminster magistrates court.” Reaction from Assange’s supporters was swift and potent. “Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange…attacked the websites of Swedish prosecutors, the Swedish lawyer whose clients have accused Mr. Assange of sexual crimes and the Swiss authority that froze his bank account,” stated an Associated Press story. “MasterCard which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday, also seemed to be having severe technological problems…The online attacks are part of a wave of online support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet.” Even as overall coverage of the WikiLeaks story dropped from the previous week, Assange played a central role in the narrative. Assange, who found himself on the cover of the December 13 Time magazine, was a lead newsmaker in nearly half (45%) of all the WikiLeaks stories from December 6-12. (To register as a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) The Rest of the Week’s News The death of Elizabeth Edwards, which seemed to surprise the media and political world with its swiftness, generated the most attention on network news, where it accounted for 11% of the airtime studied. The network morning news shows, often focused on personal and human interest topics, were particularly attentive, devoting 16% of their airtime to her passing. Many of the obituaries portrayed Edwards, 61, as a courageous and formidable woman who had battled her share of adversity. The Washington Post story described her as someone “who captured the nation's sympathy and admiration for her forthright grace in coping with her struggle with breast cancer and the infidelity of her husband, presidential candidate John Edwards.” Newsmakers of the Week
The No. 2 newsmaker (at 4%), was Elizabeth Edwards, followed by Julian Assange, also at 4%. Three people came next at 1%. They included: Elizabeth Smart, the young woman who saw her kidnapper convicted last week; Bill Clinton who made a highly publicized visit to the White House last week to help pitch the new tax deal; and Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week. The man found guilty in the Elizabeth Smart case, Brian David Mitchell, was in the No. 5 slot, also at 1%. 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 1,000 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
For the week of November 29-December 3, fully 16% of the news links on blogs and 24% on Twitter were about WikiLeaks, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That made it the No. 2 topic on both blogs and Twitter. Attention among social media users even tracked closely with that of the mainstream press, where the topic also ranked No. 2 last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, at 16% of the newshole. Bloggers responded to a number of stories about WikiLeaks last week. But the one linked-to most often was a November 29 Washington Post column by Marc Thiessen. In the column, Thiessen accused the Obama administration of failing to stop the release of the documents and offering a weak response once they went public. The bloggers that responded largely agreed with Thiessen, voicing criticism of Obama and of government overall. “Where was the Obama administration the last two times that Wikileaks posted classified information?” wrote Silvio Canto Jr. “Why didn't Pres BO ‘blow up’ the last two times and demand a review of controls over this classified information? Who is minding the store? It is not Pres BO!” “We trust our Government to protect us,” griped Mad Mike, “Looks like they can not protect themselves. They are too busy running every detail of your life. It is really simple.”* “Inaction is tacit acceptance of the destructive and criminal activities of WikiLeaks,” grumbled the Quipster, “A lack of leadership is cleary on display from the White House.” Some bloggers chose to blame the media. “It is craven malfeasance that nobody in the Fourth Estate has issued a mea culpa for their failure of duty in service to this republic,” wrote Pascal Fervor. On Twitter, although the subject was the same, the focus was markedly different. The stories linked-to here were not politically focused. Instead, most related to either technological or international aspects of the leak. The greatest number of links was to a November 28 BBC article about computer hackers attacking the WikiLeaks site shortly before the release of documents. Other technology-related stories shared on Twitter included a December 1 Associated Press article about how Amazon forced WikiLeaks to stop using its computers to distribute documents and a December 2 Wired piece about the introduction of anti-WikiLeaks legislation that would make it a federal crime for anyone to publish the name of a U.S. intelligence source. The international angles highlighted here included an article about leaked information regarding China’s frustration with military actions of North Korea and its readiness to accept Korean reunification and a story on Interpol’s ‘red notice’ for the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Rest of the Twitter Topics
The No. 1 story on Twitter last week was about a dramatic
scientific discovery—a story that made waves on Twitter, but was barely covered
in the mainstream media. Indeed 29% of Twitter links were to stories (including this Wired article) reporting that NASA had discovered a completely new life form. The new bacterium contains a different DNA than that of any life form yet discovered on Earth. Instead of phosphorus as one its building blocks (which all of Earth’s life forms use), it uses arsenic. According to the Wired article this discovery, “changes everything.” The response on Twitter was generally one of excitement: “WHOA.” Josh Shipp wrote simply. “Flippin’ awesome!” @nelleo said. “Crazy!” said Greg Hickman. A few Twitterers were not as enthused. “They call it profound but surely it’s just evolution. Same as it would be on any planet,” wrote Steve Campbell. Rounding out the top five stories on Twitter were three different Mashable articles, each at 6% of the links: A December 2 article about a BBC subscription-based iPad app for U.S. consumers; a November 30 article discussing an upcoming Verizon press conference on 4G service; and a December 1 story on the expansion plans for Groupon, a company that provides daily discounts in cities across the U.S. The Other Top Blog Stories The No. 1 story on blogs last week, at 17%, was the death of popular actor Leslie Nielsen, who passed away on November 28 at age 84. The one-time dramatic actor later gained fame as a deadpan comic star in Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies. Reminiscing about the deaths of celebrities has proved to be a recurring topic in the New Media Index. The passing of actor Kevin McCarthy was the No. 2 story the week of September 13-17, 2010 and rapper Dolla was in the same slot the week of May 17-22, 2009. TV pitchman Billy Mays was a popular subject from June 29-July 3, 2009 and the death of actor David Carradine was the second story from June 1-5, 2009. “RIP Leslie, thank you for all the laughs,” eulogized Peter Bee. “An amazing actor and comic. America’s favorite Canadian goofball. He will definitely be missed. I cant believe that he’s gone,” wrote Soulfully Poetic. A few bloggers quoted lines from his movies. “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking,” wrote the Daily Irrelevant. Several bloggers also uploaded videos of Nielsen’s most popular scenes in several movies. The third-biggest story on blogs (at 12%) was a George Will column in the November 28 Washington Post in which he argued against restricting children’s access to video games, on the grounds that it is simply a moral panic. Next, at 11%, was a December 2 Washington Post story about how federal stimulus money went to more sources than many people realized. The fifth-biggest topic (9%) was a November 24 Washington Post op-ed by a George Washington University Law professor on why Transportation Safety Administration pat-downs and body scans are unconstitutional. One week earlier, the debate over TSA airport procedures was overwhelmingly the No. 1 topic among bloggers, at 54% of the links. YouTube The TSA was also a major story on YouTube last week, as the second most-viewed news video showed a young boy being strip searched at an airport. The No. 3 video of the week, the November 22 edition of the Philip DeFranco Show, also mentioned the TSA pat-downs.
In the No. 1 video
for the week, an incensed man in handcuffs yells at reporters in Portuguese.
Most Viewed News & Politics Videos on YouTube
2. A young boy being strip
searched by the TSA while his dad stands by
3. Philip DeFranco show
from November 22, 2010
4. Video of several pundits on Fox News
Watch sharing jokes about Sarah Palin's new TV show during a commercial break
5. A video from a German comedy group
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading
commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares
those subjects to that of the mainstream press.
PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage
Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating
today's news information narrative and in shaping 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. 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.
A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket,
which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded
on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using
this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links
weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each
list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these
posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as
it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati
was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally
captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent
months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with
no indication of when it might resume.
The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage
of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to
its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the
author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of
that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the
article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's
attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to
bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and
analyzing the results.
For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme.
Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a
particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do
with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each
weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method
of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the
top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor
difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24
hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the
previous 48 hours.)
The Project also tracks the most popular news videos on YouTube each week.
*For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting
misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from
blog postings.
Note: PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index includes Sunday newspapers while the New Media Index is Monday through Friday.
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The aftermath of the January 8 shooting spree in Tucson dominated the American news media last week in a way events rarely do: the tragedy registered as the third-biggest story in a single week since PEJ began tracking coverage in January 2007.
Echoing the mainstream press, the blogosphere last week focused its attention on the new Congress sworn in on January 5. And perhaps not surprisingly, liberal and conservative bloggers had strongly divergent views about a House of Representatives under Republican control.
For the second week in a row, stories about Apple led on the popular social networking service (with 20% of the links). The majority of the attention was focused on 
Two men whose relationship may well determine what happens in Washington in the next two years were the leading newsmakers last week. New Republican House Speaker John Boehner was a dominant newsmaker in 5% of all the stories studied last week, followed closely by President Obama (also 5%). To register as a dominant newsmaker, a figure must be featured in at least 50% of a story.
In the last week of the year, bloggers' interest in the economy reached its second-highest level for all of 2010. But it wasn't exactly a passionate debate over stimulus dollars or tax policy. Instead, bloggers dissected new government parameters for measuring long-term unemployment.
As has frequently been the trend, tech news dominated Twitter, with three out of the top five stories about the internet or technology-and the other two loosely related to technology.
werful East Coast winter storm—and complaints about the cleanup effort that followed it—topped the online news agenda last week, according to a special News Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
December 29 NYTimes.com story reported on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s address to the city, in which he said he was “extremely dissatisfied” with its handling of the emergency. 
On the social networking site Twitter, the future of news media, social networking, and gadgetry were the major subjects of conversation.
The swift passage and signing of the landmark tax bill drove the economy to the No. 1 spot in the news agenda last week.
The compromise between the Obama White House and the newly empowered Republican leadership in the House and Senate to extend the Bush era tax cuts across all income groups, including the wealthiest, led all media sectors but one, with newspapers devoting 26% and online news, 20%. Cable news and radio, both home to numerous political talk shows, paid even more attention, at 38% and 35% each. Only in network TV, which focused more on extreme winter weather, was the economy preempted. It filled 12% of that sector’s newshole.
The Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor James Carville, on the December 17 airing of Parker Spitzer, echoed Weiner’s sentiment.
Though he remained central to the tax cut drama, Obama’s appearance as a lead newsmaker in stories last week dropped markedly from the week before. This past week he led in 6% of stories studied, down from 14% the week before. (To be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) However, Obama remained the chief protagonist of the economic story last week, appearing as lead newsmaker in 15% of all economy stories, making him the No. 1 newsmaker by far.
The online community weighed in heavily on the 
The No. 2 subject, with 19% of the week's links, was Twitter itself as users linked to several different stories related to the social networking platform. One was a 
by the Beltway version of a man-bites-dog story—President Obama aligning with Republicans and fighting with Democrats—last week’s tax skirmishing pushed coverage of the U.S. economy to a new high in 2010.
ting for more than three-quarters of that coverage, was the tax cut compromise.
As the central figure in the tax cut drama last week, Barack Obama was the lead newsmaker in 14% of the week’s stories, double the percentage (7%) the previous week. That represents the president’s highest level of coverage in six months, since the week of June 14-20 when he addressed the nation from the Oval Office on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
