News IndexFor the week of October 18-24, the congressional election cycle accounted for 38% of the newshole, up substantially from 28% the previous week, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That also eclipsed the previous high water mark for this year’s midterm coverage (30%), which occurred from September 13-19 when tea party candidate Christine O’Donnell won a stunning victory in Delaware’s GOP senate primary. Both of the central media narratives of this campaign gained momentum last week: The battle for control of the senate, highlighted by a number of very close races in crucial states; and the nasty tenor of many of these campaigns, including everything from sharp-elbowed ads to personal attacks. One of the races that featured both of those elements was in Kentucky. Democrat Jack Conway has been cutting into Republican Rand Paul’s lead according to some polls and last week, the campaign was marked by a controversial Conway ad questioning Paul’s religious beliefs. Rand and Conway were also among the individuals generating the most attention in last week’s campaign news. The No. 2 story, at 12%, was the state of the economy. For the past month, that narrative has been fueled by the issue of fraudulent foreclosure procedures and the big news last week was that the Bank of America had decided to resume housing foreclosures.
The week’s No. 3 story (at 5%) was a
media controversy that quickly morphed into a political issue. NPR’s firing of
analyst Juan Williams—after he said on the Fox News Channel that he gets
“nervous” and “worried” when he sees people in “Muslim garb” on planes—sparked
a debate about journalistic practices and NPR’s decision. But the episode also became
a catalyst for some conservatives to call for de-funding the public radio
outlet. The next two topics were about the two wars that have occupied America for the much of the past decade. News about Afghanistan was No. 4 at 3% of the newshole, with continuing reports of negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Hamid Karzai. The No. 5 story (at 2%) was the release of new documents about the war in Iraq by the whistleblower web site WikiLeaks on October 22. Among other things that generated headlines, the documents highlighted civilian casualties and torture and abuse of prisoners. Back in the summer, in the week of July 26-August 1, WikiLeaks’ dissemination of documents connected to the war in Afghanistan garnered about six times the media attention: 13% of the newshole as the No. 2 story. But some of that discrepancy in coverage levels can be attributed to the fact that the Iraq documents were not released until late in the week, on Friday. And in the period from October 22-24, the story accounted for 8% of the newshole. In another illustration the media’s sometimes short attention span, the story of the dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean coal miners fell to 1% of the newshole from October 18-24. That comes only a week after the episode captivated much of the world and registered as the No. 2 story, at 21% of the newshole. Crunch Time for the Midterms
The 2010 elections ran the table last
week, registering as the No. 1 story in all five media sectors studied by
PEJ. As has often been the case, the
subject dominated the two sectors that include the ideological talk shows—cable
(57% of the airtime studied) and radio (52%). It also accounted for 33% of the
network TV newshole, 28% for newspapers and 23% for news web sites. The key strategic storyline last week examined a series of nail-biting senate races that could determine whether the Republicans gain the 10 seats they need to control that chamber. And many media outlets focused on the same tight races. Examining the electoral map on the October 19 edition of CBS’ Early Show, analyst John Dickerson concluded that at least four of these key states in play—West Virginia, Nevada, Colorado and Illinois—rated as tossups. Focusing in particular on Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is facing a tough challenge from tea party-backed Sharron Angle, Dickerson called the state, “the Democratic rescue mission.” One day later, the Fox News America Live program looked at the particularly rough campaign in the tossup state of Illinois, where Republican Mark Kirk is battling Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for Barack Obama’s old seat. After showing footage from a debate in which the two attacked each other, correspondent Steve Brown said, “It’s fair to say that character is the issue which defines this race, of if you will, the attempts by the candidates to undermine each other’s characters.” Added anchor Megyn Kelly: “When you watch these two debate, you walk away feeling a little sick.” But perhaps no race got as much media attention last week as the Kentucky contest between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway. Indeed, Paul and Conway were the second- and third-leading newsmakers in election coverage last week, registering as lead newsmakers in 5% of the campaign stories. (To be a lead newsmaker, someone has to be featured in at least 50% of the story.) The catalyst for a good deal of this coverage was a much-criticized Conway ad that focused on a prank Paul reportedly pulled in his college days when he asked a young woman to bow down to and worship a god he called “Aqua Buddha.” The Conway ad charged that Paul belonged to a “secret society that called the Holy Bible a hoax” and asked, “Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up, tell her to bow down before a false idol and say his god was Aqua Buddha?” Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball program on October 18, University of Louisville professor Jasmine Farrier was critical of the spot, saying that “I think it brings Conway off message…unfortunately for Democrats, I don’t think they can hit below the belt very effectively.” Somewhat lost amid all this skirmishing in key races last week was the overall sense that Republicans are likely headed for big win on Election Day, something that political analyst Stuart Rothenberg emphasized during an October 18 interview on NPR’s All Things Considered. While stating that the Republicans may not gain the needed 10 senate seats, Rothenberg projected that they could pick up 40-50 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (they need 39 to gain control) and declared, “It’s going to be a big Republican year…the landscape is tilted very strongly toward the Republicans.” The Rest of the Week’s News At 12% of the newshole, coverage of the economy was the same as the previous week and very much in keeping with recent levels of attention. Last week, that subject generated the most attention in the online sector (18%). Several top themes drove the coverage including the news that the Bank of America was restarting foreclosure procedures in 23 states. And another element of last week’s economic coverage, about one-quarter, focused on an overseas event—the widespread strikes and protests in France over a government proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. The No. 3 story, the Juan Williams firing at NPR, accounted for 5% of the newshole for the full week. But the news broke on October 20 and in the second half of the week (October 21-24), it was the No. 2 story, at 13%. NPR contended that Williams, by making those comments about Muslims in his role as a Fox News commentator, ran afoul of an NPR rule that prohibits taking “personal public positions on controversial issues.” But the organization came under fire from a number of commentators, including former Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer on his new CNN talk show. Why did they fire him?” Spitzer asked. “Beyond me. I love NPR, I like listening to it, but firing him was a gargantuan mistake, just feeds the flames of the right.” His co-host, the more conservative Kathleen Parker, agreed saying “It was outrageous… this is just another victim of the thought police as far as I'm concerned.” On October 24, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for “not doing a better job of handling” Williams’ dismissal, but defended the decision as necessary to protect NPR’s “integrity and values.” Another aspect of narrative included calls from some conservatives—from Fox host Bill O’Reilly to ex-Alaska governor Sarah Palin—to cut off public funds for NPR. (An NPR spokesperson responded in an October 22 Yahoo!News story, saying the network does not receive any direct public funding in a given year, but gets about 1% to 2% of its funds from competitive federal grants.) As the central figure in this drama Williams proved to be the week’s No. 2 headline maker, registering as a lead newsmaker in 4% of all the week’s stories, behind only Barack Obama. Despite all this, the Williams drama last week generated nowhere near the level of coverage of another famous media firing. In the week of April 8-13, 2007, the dismissal of talk show host Don Imus by CBS and NBC after he made crude racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team was the No. 1 story, filling 26% of the newshole.
Newsmakers of the Week From October 18-24, President Obama was the top headline generator, registering as a lead newsmaker in 7% of all the week’s stories—due largely to his dominant presence as a newsmaker in the campaign coverage. The week’s No. 2 newsmaker (4%) was Juan Williams. The third-leading newsmaker, at 2%, was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas made news when it was learned that she had called Anita Hill—the woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings—and asked her to apologize. That was followed by the public surfacing of Lillian McEwen, a woman who dated Thomas several decades ago and claimed that Hill’s allegations rang true given what she knew about Thomas’s personal habits. (Hill herself was the No. 6 newsmaker at 2%.) The No. 4 and No. 5 newsmakers last week were the two principals in Kentucky’s bare knuckled senate battle—Jack Conway (2%) and Rand Paul (2%).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 October 11-15, fully 22% of the news links on blogs were about economic issues, with the vast majority focused on the housing market. That made it the No. 1 subject on blogs, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Many bloggers aimed their disgust at the banks for their lending practices while others blamed people who obtained mortgages they could not afford. Some, particularly real estate agents, also used their blogs to provide information to those who are buying or selling a foreclosed property. Bloggers have spotlighted the mortgage situation before. Three weeks earlier, an article accusing some of the nation's largest mortgage companies of using a single document processor to sign off on foreclosures without having read the paperwork was the No. 5 subject, at 6% of the links. The No. 2 story last week, also receiving 22% of the links, was a controversial column by Professor Jerry A. Coyne from the University of Chicago which appeared in the October 11 USA Today. Coyne argued that science and faith cannot coexist because each is based on foundations that have irreconcilable differences. "In the end," Coyne wrote, "science is no more compatible with religion than with other superstitions, such as leprechauns." Bloggers' reaction to the piece was mixed, as both supporters of Coyne's view and opponents weighed in. Those who agreed appreciated the directness of his piece while critics claimed that Coyne did not understand the nature of religion. Religion was also a major topic for bloggers two weeks ago, as they focused on a survey showing that atheists and agnostics were more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths. The third-biggest topic on blogs, at 18%, involved education, with a heavy emphasis on outgoing Washington D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, who recently resigned in the wake of Mayor Adrian Fenty's defeat in the Democratic primary. Two stories drew attention. One was a Washington Post article about Rhee's resignation and the other was a manifesto by Rhee and other school leaders suggesting ways to reform American education that involved giving teachers more flexibility and changing the notions of tenure. A Los Angeles Times story about LA's first ever CicLAvia event which, for several hours, turned some of Hollywood's most-trafficked streets into a pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists, was fourth at 9%. One good-news story that generated major attention in the mainstream media was also a big topic in the online world last week. The October 13 rescue of 33 Chilean miners who had been trapped underground for 69 days was the No. 5 story on blogs (9%). And it dominated among Twitter users, accounting for more than one-third (37%) of the news links. Twitterers shared images of the rescue-including a photo collection on Boston.com of the dramatic rescues and reuniting of families-and a link to a live video feed from CNN.com (which is no longer active). As with bloggers, Twitterers offered real-time reactions to the dramatic events.
"Amazing Inspiring Heart Touching Pictures from the Chile Miners," added Sheikh M Shariq. "Glad to see the Smiles everywhere."* The rest of the top stories on Twitter were all technology-focused. Second, at 12%, were two stories about Apple on Mashable. One was the news that the company had filed a trademark application for the phrase, "There's an app for that," while the other was an article about a British jeweler who created a diamond-clad iPhone with a price tag of roughly $8 million. New features for Facebook were third at 11%, including news that the site had released an option for users to utilize one-time passwords as a security measure on public computers, and speculation that Facebook would soon be adding more options to its communication features including threaded comments and voting. The No. 4 story, with 7% of the links, involved Twitter itself. A Toronto-based social media analytics company named Sysomos analyzed 1.2 billion tweets over two months and concluded that 71% of them generated no reaction, such as retweets or replies. And a story and video about Microsoft Windows' first press release in 1985 was the fifth most linked-to subject at 6%. "Windows provides unprecedented power to users today and a foundation for hardware and software advancements of the next few years," declared Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at the time. "It is unique software designed for the serious PC user, who places high value on the productivity that a personal computer can bring." The Mortgage Mess Three different stories in the Washington Post sparked a vibrant blogosphere conversation about the mortgage crisis. On October 9, a column by Washington Post staff writer Steven Pearlstein suggested that while both banks and borrowers need to share blame for the problem, a moratorium on foreclosures would have negative consequences for the economy. Then, on October 10, the Post reported that federal officials had been warned for years that the foreclosure system was designed to seize people's homes quickly, often without regard to homeowners' rights. Three days later, the Post described how the lack of paperwork associated with foreclosed homes will create uncertainty and harm the economy. The anger expressed by many bloggers identified a variety of culprits, perhaps illustrating the complexity of the issue. "The paperwork problems should not benefit those who have defaulted on their obligations through no fault of the lender," Merv Benson at Prairie Pundit wrote, criticizing people who could not pay their mortgages. "Indeed, there was fraud at every step of the mortgage process," argued sakerfa at Dprogram.net. "The big banks intentionally signed up borrowers with insufficient income and assets, threw out the documentation because it would prove fraud, racked up loan fees and received short-term payments before all of the new borrowers ran out of money, and then laundered the bad loans into securitized instruments to sell to the suckers." "What we have is a Treasury Secretary who is deeply embedded in the culture of Wall Street financing and sees and enacts policy from that viewpoint," declared Sky Dancing in a Man's World. "What we have seen is policy that continually bails out the businesses that put us all into this situation. I cannot get fired up to vote for people that enable robber barons." Some bloggers offered dire predictions for the future of the economy as a whole. "Are you ready for some RECESSION!" posted Jake Today. "And y'all thought it was over. It was. Now it may return...Greed won, prudence and fiduciary responsibility were abandoned until recalled by the federal government. Now we have part two of the same greedhead created mortgage mess. Get ready for 1929?" "We're already buried by debt that our grandchildren won't be able to repay. How deep can the hole get, before the sides cave in?" wondered The Life and Times of "Renaissance Ronin" in response to the Post's coverage. Some bloggers, however, took a more pragmatic approach and described how the mortgage crisis could impact people buying or selling a foreclosed home. "How will this affect you as a home owner?" asked Robert Clarke at the Bergen County Real Estate Blog. "If you are in some stage of foreclosure, the proceedings against you will likely be delayed while your lender verifies that all the paperwork they filed is correct...If you are buying a foreclosed property, much of the foreclosed inventory in the country is frozen while the banks conduct their investigations." Science and Faith Professor Coyne found some support online for his USA Today column suggesting faith and science could not coexist and that religion weakens our concept of truth. "Religion underscores the importance of believing," proclaimed Edwardson at Hokum-Balderdash Assay. "In short, science has the methods to mercilessly rid itself of bad ideas. Religion on the other hand has been forced to become a storehouse of untested and untestable ideas, as it continuous to seek refuge in God the Gaps hypotheses." "When science is applied to religion, disturbing things come to light," added One Furious Llama. "It's just a crying shame so many people refuse to see what's right there in front of them." Many bloggers, however, felt Coyne misunderstood religion and used disingenuous arguments. "Basically, science only finds truth in things that can be seen, touched, felt, tasted, and quantified," explained Brain of Dane. "Religion--Christianity, for example-is founded on faith in the unseen, or in some kind of inward feeling rather than a physical sense. I fully believe that my God is the one true God, who never changes, and has always stayed the same. Why? Because the bible tells me so, and because I know it." "Coyne is a fine example of the operation of what John Henry Newman called ‘antecedent reasons,'" critiqued David Fischler at The Reformed Pastor. "He starts with an unstated, unquestioned, perhaps not even acknowledged assumption: only the material world is real...Yet Coyne doesn't bother to prove his assumption...He simply makes an assumption, and then proceeds to insult those who disagree based on it." YouTube The most viewed news video on YouTube last week involved a world-renowned actor in an unusual circumstance. Johnny Depp, in London to film the fourth installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, received a letter from a nine-year-old student requesting his help. "At Meridian on Old Woolwich Road we are all a bunch of budding young pirates. Normally we're a right handful but we're having trouble mutinying against the teachers!" wrote Beatrice Delap. With only a ten-minute warning to the school's teachers, Depp showed up to meet Beatrice and her classmates, and the video of the encounter turned into a YouTube sensation.
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.A midterm election cycle quickly becoming known for harsh rhetoric and sharp personal attacks once again finished as the No. 1 story last week. But it had to share the media spotlight with a live dramatic rescue that became the ultimate reality show. For the week of October 11-17, the 2010 campaign accounted for 28% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is up slightly from the previous week (25%) and marks the fifth consecutive week in which the election has been the No. 1 subject, confirming its dominance as the fall’s top news story. Last week, the news was driven by several crucial debates among Senate candidates—including Christine O’Donnell versus Chris Coons in Delaware and Sharron Angle versus Harry Reid in Nevada. New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino generated headlines with disparaging remarks about homosexuals, and an underlying theme of the coverage last week was that the 2010 campaign has been distinguished by a particularly pungent brand of politics.
The week’s No. 2 story (filling 21% of the newshole) was the rescue of 33 Chilean miners who had been trapped underground for 69 days. The res The third-biggest story was the economy (12%), which last week focused on the housing crisis and particularly on charges of fraudulent foreclosure practices. One key element of the narrative was the news that the 50 state attorneys general were opening an investigation into those allegations. The No. 4 story was the conflict in Afghanistan (4%) with something of a twist. There was coverage of more violence on the ground, but the news also broke that the U.S. was allowing Taliban officials to travel to Kabul to participate in talks with the Karzai government—a development treated in the media as a faint glimmer of hope. And with a federal judge ordering the Pentagon to halt its current “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, the issue of gays in the military registered as the fifth-biggest story, filling 3% of the newshole. The Midterms Now securely the No. 1 subject in the news for more than a month, the 2010 elections were the No. 1 story in three media sectors last week—newspapers (28%) and the two sectors that include the ideological talk shows, cable (36%) and radio (39%).
A leading figure in that coverage was New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, who registered as a lead newsmaker in 10% of all campaign stories. (To qualify as a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) The outspoken Paladino has displayed a knack for making news, which inc Last week, he triggered a controversy by declaring, at a New York synagogue that “I don’t want [children] to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option” as heterosexuality. In an October 11 report on ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer declared: “Republican Carl Paladino…a tea party favorite…is now taking on the gay community.” In an interview on the network, former New York Mayor Ed Koch added that “this campaign has sunk to the lowest level in the last 50 years.” Several debates that generated attention last week also were distinguished by their nasty tone. The California gubernatorial race between Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman has already produced controversies over Whitman’s use of an undocumented housekeeper and an overheard conversation in which someone on Brown’s campaign described Whitman as a “whore.” An Associated Press story reported that in their third debate last week, the two “resorted to many of the personal attacks that have dominated the last few weeks of the campaign,” with Brown accusing Whitman of trying to enrich her wealthy friends and Whitman calling Brown a careerist old-style pol. Another debate that got plenty of attention, and was televised by CNN, featured tea party candidate Christine O’Donnell and Democrat Chris Coons vying for the Delaware senate seat. One clip of that faceoff, shown on MSNBC’s Hardball program, included sparring over O’Donnell’s controversial comments of a decade ago on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect show and allegations of a socialist influence in Coons’ background. “Oh God,” signed anchor Chris Matthews after viewing the exchange. And the headline on the website of a local radio station declared: “Coons & O'Donnell debate turns ugly.” One much-anticipated debate last week featured Sharron Angle, the tea party-backed Republican hopeful and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The tightness of that race was illustrated by several polls. One showed Angle up by two points, while the other had Reid winning by three. While that debate may not have produced many notable moments, one that reverberated throughout the media landscape was an Angle remark that seemed to suggest weakness on her opponent’s part. In the midst of a discussion of Social Security, Angle snapped, “Man up, Harry Reid.” The Rescue The happy ending to the Chilean mine cave-in was the No. 1 subject in two sectors last week, online news (19% of the newshole) and network news (27%). It also accounted for 33% of the airtime studied on cable news, where millions of Americans watched the men being freed from their lengthy underground confinement. And on the day of the rescue, October 13, that event dominated the media, accounting for almost half (46%) of all the coverage studied by PEJ and filling more than 60% of the airtime on cable and network news. Anchoring CNN’s live coverage of the miners’ lengthy journey back up to the surface, John King called the effort “methodical but magical.” Scenes of men returning to teary-eyed loved ones were commonplace and the emotional impact on viewers was undeniable. “It was like a moon landing or the Super Bowl or the most gripping reality TV show you've ever seen,” concluded an October 14 USA Today story. “The rescue of 33 miners from what had seemed like their tomb below the Chilean desert was the culmination of a mythic tale of death and resurrection that briefly unified the world in awed delight.” Once the men were returned, details about their lives below began to emerge. An October 15 story posted on FoxNews.com reported that Luis Urzua, “who was foreman at the San Jose mine quickly imposed his authority after the cave-in on Aug. 5 left the men trapped deep underground. A topographer by training, Don Lucho—as his men called him—mapped out the area where they were trapped, sorted the men into three eight-hour shifts and organized the rationing of food—two spoonfuls of tuna and half glass of milk every 48 hours. “ The story also noted that the miners voted on their underground decisions and that they only joked about the idea of cannibalism after they returned home. The Rest of the Week’s News At 12% of the newshole, the troubled economy was the No. 3 story last week generating the most attention in the online sector (17%) and on newspaper front pages (15%). In the past month, the level of economy coverage has been very consistent, ranging from 9% to 13% of the newshole. Last week, the top storyline was related to allegations that some loan foreclosures were processed without a proper review of the documents. The war in Afghanistan accounted for 4% of the newshole last week, down slightly from 5% the week before. The media treated the news that U.S. was helping facilitate negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government as a mildly hopeful sign, but also as a first tentative step down a long, hard road. And for the second time in a month, the subject of gays in the military finished among the top five stories. A judge’s ruling that the military must end enforcement of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the Pentagon’s subsequent suspension of the policy, accounted for 3% of the newshole. The DADT policy was the No. 3 story (at 4%) the week of Sept. 20-26 when Senate Republicans blocked a repeal effort.
Newsmakers of the Week As someone who also figured prominently in election coverage last week, President Obama was the No. 1 newsmaker from October 11-17, registering as a lead newsmaker in 6% of all the stories studied by PEJ. That’s up slightly from 5% the previous week. And in another sign of the campaign’s dominance, the week’s top five newsmakers were all midterm election figures. Carl Paladino was No. 2, registering in 2% of all stories studied. He was followed closely by Nevada senate hopeful Sharron Angle (2%) and her opponent, Majority Leader Harry Reid (2%) The No. five newsmaker was another candidate who hasn’t had much troubled getting the media’s attention lately—Delaware GOP candidate Christine O’Donnell, also at 2%. 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   The top stories in the blogosphere are often an eclectic mix of topics from technology and pop culture to science and war. But last week, with the 2010 midterm elections looming, each of the top five subjects focused on the election or a closely related subject-the economic issues helping define the campaign.
For the week of October 4-8, two of the top five stories on blogs were connected directly to the election according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Last week, 17% of the links in blogs highlighted two stories about the 2010 campaign. One was an October 4 Washington Post piece about interest groups spending far more in this election cycle than in the 2008 campaign. The other was an October 5 Post story about how the political landscape remains strongly tilted toward Republicans. Another 11% of the links concerned a major force in the 2010 political landscape-the tea parties. The debate was generated by Senator Sherrod Brown's (D-OH) op-ed in the October 3 USA Today arguing that tea party populism is driven by anger at the government and divides the country, and is therefore not real populism, which fights for all Americans. Together, these election-related stories accounted for 28% of the linked-to news story on blogs. Three other subjects that engaged bloggers last week focused on economics with a political twist. The No. 2 topic, with 12% of links, was triggered by a Los Angeles Times story about how more than $69 million in California welfare money was spent outside the state in recent years, including in Las Vegas, Hawaii and on cruise ships. That was followed closely (11%) by the revelations in an October 6 USA Today article that $162 million in stimulus spending was not disclosed by the government. The fifth-biggest subject last week was an October 6 Washington Post column by Steven Pearlstein in which he argued that Republicans had chosen to ignore the idea that income inequality exists in the country in their "Pledge to America." Bloggers on both the left and right weighed in on these subjects, with many critical of the opposing party. Liberals drove the conversation about interest group spending while conservatives were a stronger voice in the discussion of welfare abuse and unreported stimulus spending. Both sides entered the fray over Brown's criticism of the tea parties. Interest Group Funding and a Republican Edge Many bloggers criticized the Supreme Court rulings that made it easier for interest groups to make campaign contributions, most notably the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that struck down limits on corporate and union election spending. "Who benefits from the Supremes decisions?" Jake Today asked. "As the money flows from interest groups to candidates, it's reasonable to assume that donor interests will be more prominent in the winners mind than his or her new constituents."* The Griper News cited the article as an example of how the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling is "turning democracy into a quaint, antiquated formality." "And don't forget," reminded the Ugly Swallow, "your democratic voice is slowing being drowned out by loads and loads of money!" The second article featured results from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that showed signs of improvement for the Democratic Party in midterms, despite a still significant advantage for Republicans. Many bloggers simply linked to the story, but some of those that commented, saw a silver lining for Democrats. Jonathan Chait of the New Republic wrote that while Democrats made "modest improvements," he believed the improvements were "actually...pretty major." "All Democrats have to do is survive this election cycle at this point to outperform expectations, and if we do that then we'll get to watch all kinds of fun playing out on the other side of the isle," wrote ARDem from Blue Arkansas, a Democratic blog. One conservative blogger blamed the left for some of Obama's political problems. "America's so called ‘progressives' have spent most of the year pounding Democrats for everything they've done and everything they weren't able to get done," wrote Michael J. Scott of Mad Mike's America, "Their hatred of Barack Obama is particularly evident. Once it became clear that the president was not Harry Potter they became enraged, calling him names and swearing to vote against him and everything he represented. So, today is a sad day for them even though the sun is still shining on the Republicans." The Tea Party Critique The reaction to Sherrod Brown's criticism of the tea party was more mixed. "Dem. Senator Sherrod Brown claims the Tea Party doesn't like America the way it is," Scotty Starnes wrote on his conservative blog, Politically Incorrect, "Why would any American like the way America is presently? Thanks to Democrats, America has higher deficits, higher unemployment, higher foreclosures, higher bankruptcies, higher poverty and a higher number of Americans on food stamps. What's not to love?" "It would seem that Senator Brown has also forgotten that populism takes many forms and it doesn't always have to embrace leftist ideology," blogger Shane Vander Hart wrote at Caffeinated Thoughts, "The Tea Party movement is a populist movement in that it does encompass grassroots activism and it is antiestablishment (he neglects to mention the Tea Party has taken down some of the Republican establishment as well)." On the other side of the political spectrum, though, Stubborn Liberal wrote: "Sen. Sherrod Brown is correct. We can choose to continue to move forward with Democrats or be forgotten once the Republicans, conservatives, Tea Party-types, and Wall Street types take control. In a Republican controlled House and Senate, you and your rights are less important than those of millionaires and corporations." California Welfare Spree and Unaccounted Stimulus Funds Reports of welfare abuse in California and the failure to report stimulus spending sparked commentary on the perils of government waste. "Just one more example of blatant abuse of those paying the bills...THAT WOULD BE YOU! Four weeks from tomorrow we have a chance to deal a blow to those taking you for granted. Keep the Democrats running things and you can expect more and more and more of this sort of thing to continue," wrote Scott from the Life in Exile. "Gotten angry yet today?" asked Lagniappe's Lair, "If not, this ought to do it. Compassion for the poor is one thing, but to see the serious problems with our government-run welfare system, you need look no farther than California's..." Bloggers were also angered by a USA Today report that $162 million in stimulus spending was not reported by government, despite the administration's pledge to be more transparent. "But in case you, like the spokestools for our government agencies, are wishing to minimize how much money this is and how inconsequential an amount it is," wrote Martin of Conservative Boot Camp, "remember that $162.8MM would fund the salaries of 3514 median-wage jobs." "162 million dollars are not being disclosed how they are being spent despite how the Administration promised every dollar spent would be disclosed," wrote Mike Mazzeo of the Free World Blog, "Obama promised us this would be the most transparent government ever. I don't see any transparency, I see less. I see less than the previous Administration and I see more government secrets than during any period of time in our history. The American people must demand an independent audit of where the Stimulus funds are going and what they are stimulating. The American people must demand transparency. And if they don't get it, don't let them forget about it in November." Last week, as is sometimes the case, the top story on Twitter (19% of the links) was about Twitter itself. More specifically, users shared an October 6 Mashable story explaining new ways to customize your Twitter background and on the business side, news (reported by CNET) that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was stepping down from his role as CEO of the company.
Filling out the roster of top five Twitter topics, 7% were about an October 4 CNN article saying Verizon will give refunds to about 15 million customers because the company incorrectly charged them for data usage. Next, at 6%, was an October 6 BBC article about the UK bakery chain, Greggs, reporting a small rise in sales thanks to a demand for breakfast food. Some of those tweeting were excited about a bacon roll the bakery sells. The fifth-biggest subject on Twitter was an October 6 CNNMoney interview with prominent investor Warren Buffett, who advocated raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and cutting the taxes for the 98% of the population that doesn't earn that much. "This man is a great thinker!" applauded an admiring JoyThatsComing. YouTube While the top news story last week on YouTube was not exactly real news, it still received more than 2.21 million views. The Onion News Network, a sister television station of the satirical Onion publication, aired a fake story, with all the TV trimmings, reporting that popular teen pop star Justin Bieber was actually a 51-year-old pedophile posing as a teenage boy. The second most viewed video, with more than 958,000 views, was a radio clip of (now former) CNN host Rick Sanchez calling Daily Show host Jon Stewart a bigot during an interview on a SiriusXM talk show. The interview, which also included comments perceived by some to be anti-Semitic, eventually led to Sanchez's dismissal at CNN.
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. Special thanks to Irene Gruenhut and Vadim Nitkin for translating assistance. From October 4-10, the elections accounted for 25% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was down just slightly from the week before, when the subject made up 26%. Last week marked the fourth straight one in which the elections registered as the top story. And from September 13 to October 10, the subject has accounted for 27% of the newshole—easily outdistancing the No. 2 story in that period, the economy, at 12%. That amount of attention has been fairly consistent, whether there was a tight primary contest being decided—such as Delaware’s GOP Senate race—or, as was the case this past week, candidates trading barbs and accusations in the long march to November. Coverage of the midterms more than doubled that of the next biggest story—the ailing U.S. economy. Last week, the focus of the economic news was less about underwater homeowners than about the banks that were doing the paperwork. Scrutiny of questionable foreclosure practices helped make the economy No. 2 for the week, with 11% of the coverage.
The ninth anniversary of the U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan lifted that conflict to the No. 3 spot last week (5%). Sober reflections on the years of war were coupled with fresh reports of NATO casualties. It was also the week that Nobel prizes were announced. The media chose to focus especially on two of the recipients—British scientist Robert Edwards, an in vitro fertilization pioneer, and the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Coverage of the awards and the honorees accounted for 4% of the week’s news. Finally, continued coverage of the somewhat vague intelligence warning that U.S. tourists should be careful when traveling in Europe—because of fears of a terrorist attack—rounded out the top five stories of the week. Coverage of this and the broader war on terror occupied 4% of the newshole. The Midterms Story—Here to Stay Even though they did not really heat up until the spring, the midterm elections now constitute the third-biggest story of the year to date (8%) and are closing in on the No. 2 story (the Gulf oil disaster at 9%.). The economy remains the No. 1 story of 2010, at 12%. In another sign of the staying power of the campaign story, the midterms were the No. 1 story in all but one media sector last week. And they dominated the cable and radio talk shows, accounting for 63% of the airtime studied. The elections made up 51% of the overall cable coverage, 21% of the coverage in radio, 19% of network news airtime, and 18% of newspaper front page coverage. Online news websites were the only sector to devote more coverage to the economy than the campaign, although both subjects registered at 13% of the newshole. Last week, there were no truly dramatic events propelling the coverage as the media spent considerable time following—and analyzing—the tactical dimensions of campaigns around the country. Several races seemed to draw special attention. In the New York gubernatorial contest, tea party favorite Carl Paladino and Democrat Andrew Cuomo continued to duke it out. (After an exchange of words between Paladino and a New York Post reporter, Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly invited Paladino onto his program to give his side of the story). In California, Attorney General Jerry Brown (D) got into trouble over an incident in which someone in the Brown campaign was overheard describing his Republican opponent Meg Whitman, a former eBay CEO, as a “whore”—a reference to that campaign’s charge that she supposedly made a “secret deal” with the police unions to preserve their pensions in exchange for endorsements. Whitman called the accusation a slur. News outlets also followed the high-profile Connecticut senate contest between Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard Blumenthal, who debated twice last week. And the three-way race in Florida between Republican Marco Rubio, Democrat Kendrick Meek, and Independent Governor Charlie Crist generated some media interest. There, the candidates continued on the attack, portraying each other as an extreme choice for voters (Rubio, who has the backing of the tea party, is the favorite in that race). In his October 5 radio broadcast, conservative talk host Sean Hannity declared: “It’s getting ugly out there all across the board, I gotta tell you.” Hannity singled out Crist for his attacks on Rubio over Social Security, suggesting that the governor was trying to scare seniors.
Delaware Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell, also backed by the tea party, continued to make headlines as analysts discussed the controversial statements that have dotted her record. On MSNBC daytime programming, anchor Tamron Hall posed a question about her ability to present a better image to voters: “We know what happened in 1999 [referring to her dabbling in witchcraft], and now she’s got pearls, soft music in the background, and she says ‘I’m just like you. I’m you.’ Does that work?” A look at the leading newsmakers in the election coverage helps to illustrate the media’s focus last week. Out of the top 10 election newsmakers, four are tea party-backed candidates. These included O’Donnell (a lead newsmaker in 6% of all campaign stories studied), Paladino (4%), Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle (4%), and Alaska Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller (3%). (To be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story). The top campaign newsmaker last week was Meg Whitman, appearing prominently in 9% of stories. The Rest of the Week’s News News about the economy, particularly questionable banking practices related to foreclosures, represented the No. 2 story for the week, at 11% of the newshole. That was up modestly from 9% the week before. A September jobs report (the unemployment rate held steady at 9.6%) and also the California state budget crisis accounted for some of the economic news last week. But the housing crisis made the biggest splash with further revelations about dubious foreclosure practices by banks. The Bank of America halted its foreclosure sales in all 50 states on October 8 and one day later, the Washington Post reported that “Senior Obama administration officials said Friday that a nationwide moratorium on foreclosure sales may be inevitable.” Last week also marked nine years of war in Afghanistan, and the news media used the opportunity to assess the state of the conflict thus far. Coverage of this war filled 5% of the newshole, making it the No. 3 story of the week. The October 7 broadcast of ABC’s World News Tonight featured a segment that attempted to provide some perspective on the longevity of the conflict. Anchor Diane Sawyer introduced the report by saying of the soldiers: “We learned that many of them were just kids—elementary school kids—when the war began. And they’re still so young.” The segment also featured interviews with some U.S. soldiers saying where they were when the war began—6th grade, 8th grade, in English class or with their parents at home. Also last week, at No. 4 (4% of the newshole), were the annual Nobel Prize awards. While there were 11 honorees in total, several drew special attention, in part, for the controversy surrounding their selection. NBC Nightly News was one of the outlets to report that the committee’s choice to honor British biologist Robert Edwards, who pioneered in vitro fertilization, was condemned by the Vatican. And an October 4 New York Times story offered a theory about the delay in giving the honor to Edwards, since the first test tube baby was born in 1978. “The Swedish committee is believed to avoid controversial people and issues,” the story stated. “The ethical objections to in vitro fertilization may have been one reason for the long delay. Scientists speculated that Dr. Edwards’s political views—he has been a committed socialist—may have been another.” Another Nobel winner, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, drew coverage when China denounced the award. (Xiaobo will be unlikely to personally accept the award due to his ongoing 11-year imprisonment).
Stories having to do with the war on terror also filled 4% of last week’s newshole. Much of that coverage focused on the U.S. warning to American tourists in Europe advising them to beware of an increased terrorism threat. But with little detail about the nature of the threat, news outlets had little of substance to actually report. While President Barack Obama remained the top lead newsmaker last week, appearing prominently in 5% of all the stories studied, that was down from the week before when he was featured in 8%. The No. 2 newsmaker overall was California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the focus of 2% of all stories. The contest between her and Democrat Jerry Brown took an ugly turn when someone working for Brown was inadvertently caught on tape characterizing Whitman with a crude term for prostitute. For his part, Brown was tied for the No. 4 newsmaker slot, at 1%. The third-biggest newsmaker (2%) was Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani immigrant whose unsuccessful May attempt to detonate a bomb in Times Square earned him a life sentence in prison last week. The No. 4 newsmaker (1%) was the British biologist Robert Edwards, whose groundbreaking work on in vitro fertilization won him the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.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 September 27 to October 1, almost a quarter (23%) of the news links on blogs were to a Los Angeles Times story about the survey, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that non-believers were able to answer more questions about religion correctly than believers, even when one controlled for educational background. It also showed that people were also ill-informed on some of the questions related to their own religion. A majority of Protestants, for example, were unable to identify Martin Luther as the primary figure behind the Protestant Reformation. (The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Project for Excellence in Journalism are both are part of the Pew Research Center.) While news stories about the survey were popular online, part of the appeal of the subject was a series of interactive surveys on the Web. On the Pew Forum website, visitors could take a shortened version of the quiz to compare their own knowledge to that of the general public. In the first week it was posted, the quiz was taken more than a million times. In addition, both CNN.com and NYTimes.com also offered versions of the quiz. Bloggers who discussed the results generally fell into two camps. One group, constituting a majority of bloggers, considered themselves atheists or agnostics and welcomed the results. The other, much smaller, group consisted of people of faith who either saw the results as a wake-up call, or had problems with the notion of faith being tied to knowledge rather than beliefs. In both cases, many bloggers made personal connections to the news as they described their own religious journeys. The No. 2 story on blogs last week, at 15%, involved a controversial legal and national security issue. According to a September 25 Washington Post article, the Obama administration urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen living overseas with alleged ties to Al Qaeda. The administration claimed the case would reveal state secrets while civil liberties groups argued that the government should not have unchecked powers to assassinate American citizens without due process. Overwhelmingly, bloggers condemned Obama's position and worried about a precedent being set for future potential abuses of power. Two different subjects tied for No. 3 on blogs with 9% of the links. One was a column in the Washington Post by Princeton philosophy Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah suggesting that future generations will condemn the current one for institutions such as the prison system and practices such as industrial meat production. The other story was a September 26 Los Angeles Times report about comments made by former CIA Director Michael Hayden that the president should have the authority to shut down the Internet in times of crisis. The fifth story, at 7%, was the discovery by astronomers of Gliese 581G, the first planet found in another solar system believed to have the basic conditions needed to support extraterrestrial life. On Twitter, two of the top five stories were technology related. But the other three included a sports scandal, a scientific discovery and an unfortunate culinary surprise.
"Don't Look if You Want to Enjoy Your Next Meal," warned a Tweet from the The Stir: Food & Party channel.* The announcement of Blackberry's Playbook, its answer to Apple's tablet iPad device, was second at 12%, followed by a report about Google's plans to announce a new computer image format that will decrease file sizes by as much as 40 percent compared to the popular JPEG file format. The fourth story (at 6%) was the discovery in Peru of a 36 million year-old fossil from a giant penguin. The animal was believed to be about five feet tall and weigh nearly twice as much as an Emperor penguin, the largest living species.
And news that 2010 Tour de France winner, Spaniard Alberto Contador, tested positive for a banned substance and has since been suspended was fifth with 5%. The cycling world has long been riddled with rumors and speculation about performance enhancing drugs. On Twitter, the story was particularly popular with people writing in Spanish as many noted that suspicions about Contador had persisted for months. Religion and Knowledge Last week, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a phone survey of 3,412 Americans testing their knowledge about various world religions. Each person was asked a series of 32 questions. On average, Americans answered 16 correctly. However, the results that drew the most attention showed that certain groups got more right than others. Athiests and agnostics averaged 20.9 correct, which was the highest number, followed closely by Jews and Mormons. Protestants, on the other hand, averaged 16 correct answers while Catholics averaged 14.7. The Los Angeles Times' story about the Pew Forum study raised the question as to why an atheist would do better on the survey than a member of a major religion. A number of bloggers claimed to have the answer. "Atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a very religious tradition and consciously gave it up," wrote Linguist-in-Waiting. "Religious believers mostly are believers simply because they felt like clinging to tradition, and they never bothered questioning their beliefs." "We atheists tend to be a thinking bunch," declared Small Town Atheist. "We care more about whether or not what we think is true rather than if it makes us feel good...We listen to claims of religions (and scientists, politicians, ghost hunters etc.) and we think critically. Most religious people either can't be bothered to-or have been trained to-not analyze what they're being told." A number of bloggers connected the news to their own spiritual history. "Luckily, I'm one of those smart agnostic people the article mentioned, but this only came about because like all confused, nonreligious, young people I've gone through what I like to call ‘the search,'" shared Cassandra at Cassagram before describing various experiences she had with different religions. For some religious bloggers, the survey missed the point. "What person can really know about God if they don't believe in His existence or deny His deity," wondered Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb at Soul Rhythms. "This study, as I read it, addresses the information-gathering side of religion more than the internal knowledge of God. It misses the experiential side of knowing God, as it measures what's in the head and not the heart." Others were troubled by the respondents' lack of knowledge about their own religion. "This should be a clarion call to Catholics - we NEED to know our faith," proclaimed Marcel at Aggie Catholics. "It isn't enough to accept what our parents believe-we NEED to examine the doctrines of the Church to appropriate them as adults ourselves." "This brings us to complacency, which is a horrible thing in ANY aspect of life," determined Jason Mudd. "Many people who come to meet and know God and accept him think that they are done, when in fact they have only begun a very long journey...All believers in faith need to know that the acknowledgement of faith is just the beginning, and that their relationship with Christ is much like a long walk through the woods-there will be ups, downs, hazards, beautiful views and the occasional storm." Obama Invokes State Secrets The overwhelming majority of bloggers who addressed the controversy surrounding the White House's decision to ask a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit about an assassination attempt of a U.S. citizen overseas expressed serious Constitutional concerns. Civil liberties groups sued the U.S. government on behalf of the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a cleric believed to be living in Yemen, claiming that the order to kill al-Aulaqi amounted to an extrajudicial execution. Last April, al-Aulaqi became the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill due to his ties to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner. "People can be killed on the orders of a president with no trial, no sentence, no due process-not even an indictment? I don't want to live in any country that allows such actions," explained Debra Sweet. "Claiming the power to assassinate Americans is odious enough, but the Obama administration has raised the stakes by claiming the courts cannot hear the case," posted Justin Blank at Wintry Smile. "Given the way the state secrets claim is made, does anyone imagine that the administration would ever allow a legal challenge to any assassination without crying about state secrets?" And a number of bloggers reprinted excerpts from a column by Salon's Glenn Greenwald. "At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record," Greenwald wrote. "But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is ‘state secrets:' in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are ‘state secrets,' and thus no court may adjudicate their legality." YouTube It would seem unlikely that many people would be interested in watching a video of a Swiss politician delivering a speech about meat imports. But when the speaker loses control, a clip of the event can become a viral sensation. The most viewed news video on YouTube last week was of Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz delivering a parliamentary speech on the rather wonkish topic of spiced meat imports. However, during the reading of his prepared text, Merz began giggling and laughing uncontrollably. According to the Guardian, Merz was "particularly amused by the bureaucratic language in which the bill was written." The minister has become a worldwide figure because of the video, which has been viewed more than 1.2 million times since it was posted on September 20. One maker of air-dried meats has even taken to advertise their products using the slogan: "Never lose your sense of humour."
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.As the president hit the road to shore up the Democrats’ faltering fortunes, the midterm elections topped the news agenda for the third week in a row, accounting for 26% of the newshole from Sept. 27-Oct. 3, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Even though the 2010 campaign did not heat up until the primaries began in earnest in the spring, it is now the third-biggest story of the year to date, accounting for 7% of the newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. The No. 1 story in 2010 thus far has been the economy (12%), followed by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (9%). On the ideological radio and cable talk shows last week, a full 69% of the airtime studied was devoted the elections—with hosts finding plenty to talk about as President Obama launched a series of campaign-style appearances around the country. The economy, the No. 2 story last week at 9%, was highlighted in stories related to the housing crisis and a suspension of foreclosures by some big lenders accused of improperly processing paperwork. The No. 3 story last week was the debate over reforming the nation’s education system. The topic, which accounted for 6% of the newshole, got a boost from an education “summit” convened by NBC as well as a call from Obama to lengthen the school year by a month. It was the third week in a row that education, a subject that does not often garner major mainstream coverage, was among the top five stories.
Changes in the Obama Administration—led by the departure of controversial chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor of Chicago—represented the fourth most-covered topic, at 5% of the newshole. Rounding out the roster of top stories was news from South Asia. Pakistan, where American soldiers mistakenly killed several Pakistani soldiersin an airstrike, was the No. 5 story, at 4% of the newshole. That was followed closely by the war in Afghanistan, also at 4%, where videotaped interrogations of American soldiers accused of killing civilians attracted renewed attention to the conflict. Midterms Drive the News Several storylines converged to keep the November elections high on the news agenda last week, from the president’s public appearances to rally supporters to the twists and turns in a number of key races. At 26% of the newshole, the midterm elections led in all five media sectors and consumed nearly half the airtime studied on radio (48%) and more than a third (41%) of it on cable TV. Though he is not on any ballot, Obama was the lead newsmaker in 20% of the campaign stories last week (to be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story), indicating the degree to which his return to the campaign trail drove the coverage. For example, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, appearing on MSNBC on Sept. 29, noted that the crowd that turned out for the president’s appearance at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was large and reminiscent of those from his 2008 run for the White House. “The White House hopes everyone looks at that rally like we saw at the University of Wisconsin and asks ‘What enthusiasm gap?’ He was able to pack thousands of students into the area. The only question is will he be able to pack them into the polls?” Guthrie said. Face-to-face encounters with the president in small-group settings in back yards around the country also generated a number of stories. After one visit to Virginia, the Washington Post reported on Sept. 28 that the events were: “part of a whirlwind cross-country trip this week in which Obama is venturing into the yards of ‘real people’ to push out several messages on the economy.” Though by the end of the week there were reports of the tightening of some polls, the dominant theme was the losses that Democrats are expected to suffer and how some seats once considered safe for Democratic incumbents were suddenly in play. Republican consultant Dick Morris, appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show on Sept. 28, predicted Republicans would win big in November: “We are talking about the obliteration an entire generation of Democrats in Congress.” A steady drumbeat of coverage of Delaware GOP senate nominee Christine O’Donnell kept her in the headlines—but not necessarily in a way that a candidate would prefer. Liberal talk show hosts aired archival clips of her where she rejected evolutionary science—In part, she said, because monkeys do not seem to be evolving today—and took other controversial stances. This contributed to a narrative about some of the tea party candidates holding unconventional views. “We’re going to see a pretty big increase in the wingnut caucus in Congress,” Paul Waldman, senior correspondent for the liberal American Prospect, said on CNN’s Countdown program on Sept. 27. “The GOP is becoming increasingly radical and dumber.” News in other prominent races also generated headlines, such as revelations that California Republican gubernatorial candidate and former business executive Meg Whitman once employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper (Whitman denied knowing the woman was not legal). Whitman, who also faced off last week in a debate with Democratic opponent Jerry Brown, was the lead newsmaker in 15% of the election stories in the sample, second only to Obama. Carl Paladino, the GOP candidate for governor of New York, also made news when he appeared to threaten a New York Post reporter during a heated exchange. Mixed Economic Signals, Education Reform Attracts Headlines Though it garnered only about a third as much coverage as the elections last week, the economy (9%) remains the biggest story of 2010 and a continuing source of mixed headlines. Last week came news of a rise in home values, a decline in consumer confidence and accusations that bankers took shortcuts in processing foreclosures. As it has often in the past, economic news received the most coverage in newspapers last week, where the subject accounted for 16% of front-page newshole. That compared with 10% of the newshole online and 6% and 4% of the airtime on network and cable news, respectively.
Allegations that some home lenders had not properly processed the paperwork for thousands of foreclosures prompted three of the biggest lenders to put a hold on foreclosures altogether. That helped push housing to the top of the economic news agenda, accounting for almost one-fifth of the overall economy coverage last week. “Tens of thousands of Americans who were on the verge of losing their homes are getting an unexpected reprieve,” said Lester Holt on the CBS Evening News on Oct. 1. Further debate over the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, and a census report that showed a historically wide income gap between the poorest and richest Americans, were also prominent in the coverage. The No. 3 story, the debate over education (6%), was driven by several separate storylines, from Obama’s reiteration that the school year should be extended to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg saying he would like to end automatic tenure for teachers. NBC also conducted an “education summit.” The decision of Obama chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to leave the White House and word of the appointment of his successor, Pete Rouse, dominated stories about the administration, which represented the No. 4 story last week (5% of the newshole). News of the administration was the second- biggest story on radio news (7%) and the third- biggest story on network TV (7%) and cable news (6%). The shooting of some Pakistani soldiers by American forces in a helicopter attack, and the subsequent closing of a NATO supply route through that country, made Pakistan to the No. 5 story last week, at 4% of the newshole. Some of that coverage was also related to flooding that hit the nation several weeks ago, but is still causing misery. Close behind (also 4%), was the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Among the stories driving that narrative were allegations of U.S. soldiers killing civilians. Videotapes of interrogations of U.S. service members admitting a role in the killings were leaked, and that storyline was the biggest last week, representing more than one-third of the overall coverage of the war.
Newsmakers All five of the top newsmakers last week were political figures, further evidence of the growth in coverage of the 2010 elections. President Obama was No. 1, having led in 8% of the stories (to be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story). His departing chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was second, at 4%. The man announced as his successor, Pete Rouse, was the fifth leading newsmaker, registering in 2% of the stories. California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who appeared in a debate with Democratic rival Jerry Brown and addressed revelations that she once employed an undocumented worker as a housekeeper, was No. 3, at 3%. And former President Jimmy Carter was No. 4, at 2%. Carter was briefly hospitalized after he fell ill while on a book tour in Ohio. 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. Jon Morgan of PEJ
From September 20-24, more than one-third (35%) of the news links on blogs were about Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, making it the week’s No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In his book, Woodward—a Washington Post associate editor and half of the famous reporting duo that unraveled the Watergate cover-up—depicted significant divisions and debates within the administration as Obama tried to formulate a strategy in Afghanistan. He ultimately decided to send 30,000 more troops to the country. But the bloggers who dominated the conversation last week focused largely on one quote from Obama printed in a Washington Post article on the book: “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever…we absorbed it and we are stronger.” In a series of critical and often angry posts, many bloggers seized on that passage to argue that the president is indifferent to whether America is attacked by terrorists again. It was somewhat similar to criticism of Obama voiced by such well-known Republican figures as Liz Cheney, the former Vice President’s daughter, and ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The tone of the online conversation over politics and public policy can often vary between partisan ferocity and an almost-wonkish dissection of the issues. Last week was an example of the former. The other top subjects on blogs last week included two stories from the Washington Post about companies behaving badly. In second place, 14% of blogs linked to a September 20 story about major health insurers deciding to stop offering new child-only health plans rather than comply with rules in the new healthcare law requiring plans to accept children with preexisting conditions. The No. 5 story (6% of links) was a September 22 article about some of the nation’s largest mortgage companies using a single document processor who said he signed off on foreclosures without having read the paperwork. The blogs linking to the health care story came from both sides of the political spectrum. Conservatives derided the outcome saying it was another example of the problems with “ObamaCare,” while liberal bloggers saw it as evidence of greedy insurance companies. The third-biggest story (8% of links) was a September 17 Washington Post article about the local ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. firing veteran anchor Doug McKelway. Next, at 7% and No. 4, was a September 18 Washington Post article about the accusation that members of the Stryker Combat Brigade in Afghanistan killed Afghan civilians for sport. All the top blog subjects were linked to pieces in the Washington Post, which tends to be a popular source for bloggers.
In many weeks, technology-related news leads on Twitter, and last week, one such storyline completely dominated. The top Twitter story by far last week, with 58% of links, was about a security flaw on Twitter that redirected users to third-party websites without their consent. The tweets, mostly links to a Mashable article, served as warnings to other users. Although it was not linked to nearly as often, there was also a CNET article on the subject. A recent PEJ study on technology in the media found that Twitter itself was the top technology storyline on Twitter from June 2009 through June 2010, accounting for 15% of the stories. But rarely does it monopolize the news agenda to the degree it did last week. Twitter was also the No. 1 news video on YouTube last week, although that clip was not about the security issue. The YouTube video advertised changes to the new Twitter.com website.
The second-biggest Twitter topic, 7% of links, was about Mashable’s posting of the new trailer for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie. The No. 3 story (5%) was a BBC article about a woman who successfully fought off a bear with a zucchini, No. 4 (5%) was a Wired story about Apple approving a media player for the iPad and the fifth story (4%) was also a Wired story about T-Mobile claiming it had the right to censor text messages. The Woodward Book and Obama Almost all of the reaction to Bob Woodward’s new book in the blogosphere came from Obama opponents and virtually all of it homed in the quote, “We can absorb a terrorist attack.” Bloggers strongly criticized the president, and some cases, questioned his patriotism. “To me, this is like saying 9/11 wasn’t so bad after all,” wrote a Few Figs, “not a good mindset if your highest duty is to protect the citizens of your country, [in my opinion].” Brian Kelly of Libertyblog thought the Post should have written about the quote more prominently writing, “‘We can absorb a terrorist attack.’ Obambi thinks so, Bush didn’t, and moved heaven and earth—waterboarding, wiretaps, wars—to prevent one. The Washington Post put the quote in paragraph six of a story about Bob Woodward’s new book. Drudge put it in red letters at the top of his page. Enough said.”* “Obama is 2010’s Nixon. There are no protests because there is no draft, and the military is a tiny percentage of our population. Our callow nation pays false homage to the sacrifices our volunteer military makes while voting in those that will abuse that service. It’s sick, frankly. It says much about Obama, and even more about us,” wrote Ken Nelson on his blog. One blogger made a sports analogy to Obama and Bush’s presidencies: “George Bush was a baseball fan, and when he ordered the Iraqi surge in 2007, he was three runs down, bases loaded, behind in the count and swinging for the fences. Having essentially committed his reserves, the country was all in—there were virtually no troops left to deploy that could be maintained on a sustainable basis. “Barack Obama is a basketball player and it now seems clear that he chose a different strategy, the fadeaway jumper: If the ball goes through the hoop, so much the better, but if it does not, the player’s momentum takes him back to his own side of the court, ready to play defense,” wrote Neptunus Lex. “Americans should be concerned,” Jack the Blogger at the Western World wrote, “It appears that Obama is letting politics decide how to protect our country and win a war.” YouTube Twitter was also the subject of the No. 1 news video on YouTube, with an advertisement for the new Twitter homepage that featured the ubiquitous Twitter bird logo. That clip generated more than 1.59 million views. Beyond Twitter, two of the top five news and politics videos on YouTube were of Delaware Republican senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell saying controversial things. The first video, with more than 580,000 views, was a 1999 clip from a Bill Maher’s show, Politically Incorrect. In the clip, O’Donnell says that she “dabbled into witchcraft.” The second video, with more than 560,000 views, was a clip from an MTV show called Sex in the ‘90s that liberal host Rachel Maddow showed on her MSNBC program. In it, O’Donnell speaks out against masturbation and sex outside of marriage. O’Donnell was also a focus of attention in the mainstream media last week, appearing as a lead newsmaker in 4% of all the stories examined by PEJ, generating more attention than anyone other than Barack Obama. To be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.
Note: Due to a capture error, no stories from Monday, September 20, 2010, were included in this week’s sample.
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 of PEJ The 2010 midterms dominated the news agenda for the second week in a row and seemed poised to emerge as the major mainstream media story of the fall season. From September 20-26, the elections accounted for 25% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is down modestly from the previous week (30%), when Christine O’Donnell’s September 14 upset win in Delaware’s GOP Senate primary drove the narrative. That was still almost twice as much coverage as the next biggest story, the economy (13%). The significant political narratives of the week included continuing coverage of the tea party’s influence and the Republicans’ unveiling their Pledge to America policy blueprint. The midterm elections are unlikely to approach the kind of sustained attention paid to the last presidential race—which filled a whopping 36% of the newshole in 2008. But with their potential to switch party majorities in the House, and possibly even the Senate, they have been the top story for the last two months (edging out the economy 14% to 12%) and are likely to generate more attention in the countdown to the Nov. 2 balloting.
The No. 3 story, at 4%, was the Senate’s blocking last week of a measure that would have repealed the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gay men and women serving in the military. The fourth-biggest story of the week was the education system (3%), but that was propelled largely by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to the Newark New Jersey public school system. This marked that second week in a row that education, a subject that does not often generate much mainstream media coverage, made the roster of top-five stories. The week before it was the No. 3 story at 3%, with coverage including a mix of educational issues. Finally, the No. 5 subject story, also at 3%, was the war in Afghanistan where the major news was the death of nine U.S. troops in a helicopter crash. Another story related to the war—the release of Bob Woodward’s new book reporting on deep divides within the Obama Administration over Afghan policy—accounted for an additional 3% of the coverage. The Midterms The elections ranked as the No. 1 story last week in four of the five media sectors, generating the most attention in radio news (39%) and cable news (35%). Indeed, on the ideological talk shows on radio and cable, the subject consumed 51% of the airtime studied by PEJ last week. One of the major campaign storylines last week was the impact of the tea party, a subject that moved to the center of the news agenda after tea party-backed Christine O’Donnell stunned veteran Congressman Mike Castle, a moderate, in Delaware’s GOP primary.
In the wake of that race, a September 20 Washington Post story asserted that for “a handful of Republican Senators, the wo O’Donnell herself continued to be a lightning rod for coverage, too, even as she said she would no longer talk to the national press. Some of that publicity last week focused on an 11-year-old clip from Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” show in which O’Donnell stated that “I dabbled into witchcraft.” A CBS news story that discussed that comment couldn’t resist mixing politics with puns, reporting that the “witchcraft comments may have spooked some Republican leaders.” Indeed, for the second week in a row, O’Donnell dominated election news, appearing as a lead newsmaker in one-fifth (20%) of the midterm stories studied last week. To register as a lead newsmaker, a figure must be featured in at least 50% of a story. House Republicans also made news by releasing their Pledge to America plan should they regain leadership of that body—one that includes such goals as cuts in government spending, extending tax cuts and a repeal of the new health care law. The document generally received tepid reviews. On Anderson Cooper’s September 23 CNN show, as an example, it was criticized by pundits from both the left and right. Democratic consultant Paul Begala said “this looks much more like an elite Washington lobbyist deal” while conservative commentator Erick Erickson declared: “It's very disappointing. I kind of prefer to be the ‘party of no’ than the ‘party of pretty much anything goes as long as we don't give you specifics.’”The Economy At 13% of the newshole from September 20 to 26, coverage of the economy fell slightly from 16% the previous week. And it was the No. 1 story online (at 15%). It also filled 15% of the coverage studied on newspaper front pages, where it was the second-biggest story of the week. Some of the coverage last week included the Senate Democrats’ decision to postpone any decision on extending former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts until after the election. Another storyline highlighted a milestone of sorts that may not have brought relief to Americans still feeling the impact of a rocky economy. “The recession officially ended in June 2009, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of such dates,” stated a New York Times report. “As many economists had expected, this official end date makes the most recent downturn the longest since World War II. This recent recession, having begun in December 2007, lasted 18 months.” But the formal end of the recession may have been overshadowed by the comments of Velma Hart, an African American woman and Obama supporter who spoke candidly to the president at a town hall meeting on the economy. “I’m one of your middle-class Americans,” declared Hart, who said she was “exhausted” from defending Obama and his administration and “deeply disappointed with where we are now.” That clip soon went viral and reverberated throughout the media landscape, with some commentators and political opponents citing it as an example of growing disillusionment with the president, even from his backers. The Rest of the Week’s News There was a substantial drop in coverage last week from the economy to the No. 3 story, the debate over gays in the military, which filled 4% of the newshole. The narrative was driven by the failure to break a Republican-led filibuster by those seeking to overturn the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy—putting at least a temporary halt to efforts to allow openly gay people to serve in the military. The story got the most coverage in cable news, (7%), not surprising given its resonance as a hot-button cultural issue. The No. 4 story was education (3%), with Facebook founder Zuckerberg’s big donation to the Newark schools—announced on Oprah Winfrey’s show—fueling the coverage. At least some of the coverage raised the possibility of a connection between the generous gift and the looming release of a new movie, “The Social Network,” that depicts Zuckerberg in some unflattering ways. The fifth-biggest story, 3%, was the Afghanistan war, where the deadly helicopter incident generated significant attention. And that conflict was closely connected to coverage (another 3%) of the new Woodward book “Obama’s Wars, which depicts an internal policy struggle over Afghanistan strategy. “Most of the book centers on the strategy review, and the dissension, distrust and infighting that consumed Obama's national security team as it was locked in a fierce and emotional struggle over the direction, goals, timetable, troop levels and the chances of success for a war that is almost certain to be one of the defining events of this presidency,” stated a Washington Post story. The White House response to the book included the assertion that the policy debates detailed in its pages were already quite well known to the public.
Newsmakers of the Week Figuring prominently in the economy coverage, Barack Obama was the top newsmaker the week of September 20-26, registering as a lead newsmaker in 10% of all the stories examined by PEJ. That is significant jump in attention from the previous week, when the president was a lead newsmaker in only 4% of the stories. Delaware’s surprise Republican Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell, was next at 4% of all stories studied, a significant amount of coverage, but a decrease from the previous week when she registered in 7% of them. Next, at 2%, was Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who last week addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He was followed (also at 2%) by Eddie Long, the Atlanta mega-church pastor who was accused of having improper sexual relationships with several male teenagers. The week’s fifth-leading newsmaker was Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert (2%), who last week testified at an immigration hearing on Capitol Hill about the lives of undocumented farm workers. Colbert—who stayed in comedic character for much of his testimony—generated controversy and some negative reviews from members on both sides of the aisle. 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  New developments in the tech world sometimes make mainstream news headlines, but they almost always generate major attention on Twitter. Last week was no exception as Twitter was dominated by developments and new products for leading social networking sites-and the announcement of a Google social network.
For the week of September 13-17, the top three stories on Twitter were about innovations by major players in the online world: Twitter, Google, and Facebook. Combined, they made up more than a third (36%) of the top news links, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. While a range of technology topics often lead Twitter's news agenda, last week's top stories were all focused on one very specific area: social media. Facebook, the preeminent social media tool, is still growing, especially internationally. Twitter, also a social networking tool, released a new layout last week. Google, an internet powerhouse, has struggled to create a successful social networking tool and the announcement of a planned social network from them could have a significant impact in this field. And, as was the case last week, social media users often seem to function as announcers and reviewers of new online products. A first look at the redesigned Twitter website from Wired's blog Epicenter was the top subject, with 15% of linked tweets. A number of Twitter users complained, however, that they did not yet have access to the new site. Those who used the new Twitter site shared their thoughts with others, including @tasarial who tweeted this screen shot and @Mrs_McFeealy, writing "New twitter is much more convient then the old one."* Others like @scottuses, made fun of it, saying, "You got the new twitter? How quaint. I'm already on the new new twitter. With lasers." Google was the No. 2 subject, with 11% of tweet links. The focus was a September 15 Mashable article about Google Me, a new social networking site, expected to launch later this year. Most Tweets about Google Me linked to articles discussing it and few users opined on the issue. The third subject (10% of links) was based on another Mashable article on Facebook's Places feature going live in the UK. The location feature allows users to check into real-world locations (similar to Foursquare) and was available in America a month ago. Many Tweeters seemed concerned about what they saw as the intrusive nature of the feature. @iova grumbled, "Great Facebook Knows what I like who are my friends all my personal info and now where I am with Facebook places! Get out of my life!" And @thehacksaw joked "Somewhat expecting tomorrow's headlines to read ‘Facebook Places launched, house burglaries up 400%.'" The No. 5 Twitter subject (at 6%) was another story about a new technology product: Bitbop, a new Android application that can bring streaming TV shows to smartphone users over 3G or Wi-Fi. The one top-five Twitter story (9% of links) that was not about technology focused on a BBC article about a British sportscaster's complaint that a TV show made an inappropriate comment about her sexual identity. Blogs In a week in which no one subject really dominated the blogosphere, two stories tied for first place, with 13% of the news links. One, the war in Afghanistan, was a topic that also generated attention in the mainstream press, registering as the No. 4 story last week. The other, the death of longtime actor Kevin McCarthy, was another example of bloggers' tendency to reminisce about show biz celebrities, some of them more well-known than others, who have recently passed on.
The next biggest story for bloggers (11% of links) involved a 2004 BBC article about the discovery of a diamond star that astronomers named Lucy. It's not clear why, but the article reemerged on the blogosphere last week, appearing on Space and Science and several other blogs-with none mentioning that the discovery was over six years ago. But some comments posted on the Daily Tech blog did notice the time lag. "Note the date on that BBC article...Monday, 16 February 2004," wrote elFarto. "Slow news day, I guess," responded MrTeal. In fourth place, at 10%, were two Washington Post opinion pieces about the war on terror: a Ted Koppel September 12 opinion piece and a September 13 column by Fareed Zakaria. Both criticized the U.S. approach to the war on terror, saying the nation had overreacted. Wrapping up the top five most linked-to blog stories, at 9%, was a September 11 Los Angeles Times article about Obama's crumbling electoral coalition. Afghanistan The two stories about Afghanistan that were most linked-to covered different aspects of the conflict. The Washington Post ran an article on September 10 about the Department of Defense attempting to buy the entire first printing of a memoir by a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, in order to keep the book from the public. The book reportedly recounts planned covert operations that were shut down by military officials concerned about offending Pakistan. "It's unlikely that this effort at suppression will work very well...It's tough to kill off information that's already out there," Stephon Ty wrote on his blog. Can't Win For Losing agreed. "So what if I told you that the government was attempting to completely destroy a book? You'd call that censorship, right? Yeah.. me too. Except for that's exactly what the Defense Department is planning on doing to the entire first printing of Operation Dark Heart written by a former Defense Intelligence Agent." The other article was a Los Angeles Times article about a deadly Afghani demonstration against Rev. Terry Jones's plans to burn a Koran, which he eventually abandoned. The planned Koran burning was the fifth-biggest story on blogs in the NMI two weeks ago. "[T]hanks to Pastor Jones, demonstrations against his plans turned fatal in Afghanistan, leaving two dead. This is really helping our international reputation...not" said Danielle Chavez, a blogger for Write for the Right. Some well-known people weighed in on the issue via blog as well. Former senior policy advisor and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Michael Gerson wrote on the blog the Roosevelt Room, "It is a horrifying wonder of the Internet age that a failed, half-crazed Florida pastor with a Facebook account can cause checkpoints to be thrown up on major roads in New Delhi, provoke violent demonstrations in Logar province south of Kabul, and be rewarded with the attention of America's four-star commander in Afghanistan and the president of the United States." Kevin McCarthy's Obituary Kevin McCarthy, an actor best known for his role in the 1956 sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and the 1951 film "Death of a Salesman" died at age 96 on September 11. His Los Angeles Times obituary was frequently linked-to in blogs. While famous people like Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy generate major headlines in the mainstream media when they die, somewhat lesser luminaries have a tendency to be featured more on blogs. For example, web tributes popped up for rapper Dolla for 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 June 1-5, 2009. Many bloggers last week fondly recalled McCarthy's past roles. J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet wrote a list of shows in which McCarthy starred, writing, "I remember that his was a familiar face on boob-tube programs from the 1950s through the ‘90s...Thank you, Mr. McCarthy, for your lifetime of entertainment." "He maybe wasn't one of the greats-but maybe he should have been. Godspeed, Kevin," wrote Jay W. on Nighthawk Postcards. YouTube On the video sharing site YouTube, popular host Philip DeFranco dominated last week. The No. 1 video from two weeks ago of DeFranco's weekly show came in third place last week with almost a million views, and a "pilot episode" of one of his new shows, Fail Friday, was the fourth most popular. In sum, these two videos had over 1.6 million views during the week, more than any other video. There are several popular YouTube shows hosted by people who post their own commentary along with items they find interesting in the news or on the internet. DeFranco's popularity has pushed him to the top of the list of most-viewed news clips before (April 12-16, August 23-27 and September 6-10). But this is the first time he has had two separate videos in the top-five list.
The No. 2 video was footage of the fire that erupted after a gas line ruptured in San Bruno, California, taken by a videographer who lived up the hill from the fire, according to a blog account. The video showed the thick smoke and fire along with helicopters responding to the scene. It was uploaded September 9 and had over a million views by the end of last week.
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 home mortgage crisis, fueled recently by charges of fraudulent foreclosure procedures, triggered angry reactions aimed at multiple culprits from bloggers of all political stripes last week.
"To cheers and applause, the last rescue worker exits the capsule that brought all 33 miners safely home," tweeted many users.
cue proved to be one of the rare mega-stories that offered nothing but good news, and it was viewed live around the world. In the U.S., the story filled one-third of the airtime studied on cable news for the week.
luded a face-to-face confrontation with a New York Post reporter.
Stories about Facebook came in a close second, with 18% of links. On October 6, 
The top story, with 13% of the links, was a 
The subject on which the outcome of the midterms may well pivot, the troubled U.S. economy, was the No. 2 story last week. One of the significant events was the news that the recession was officially over—and had indeed ended in June 2009. But that report had to compete with a widely disseminated video of an Obama supporter who, addressing the president at an economy-oriented town hall meeting, declared, “I’m exhausted… defending you.”
rrying has only just begun as they contemplate the possibility of serious primary challenges from tea party-backed candidates in 2012.” That list included incumbent Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine, Utah’s Orrin Hatch, Indiana’s Richard Lugar and Massachusetts’ Senator Scott Brown, the last of whom was elected in 2010 with tea party support.
