News Index A key narrative in last week’s campaign focused not on Barack Obama and John McCain themselves, but on two people whose public roles reflect crucial challenges facing the candidates—Michelle Obama and George Bush.Since Obama is a relatively unknown quantity to many Americans, his wife, Michelle, is virtually certain to be scrutinized for clues to his character and philosophy. She may come to represent a proxy for whether Obama can establish a comfort factor with enough voters to win the White House. For McCain, the challenge is whether he is too closely tied to an unpopular incumbent President in George W. Bush. Both of those storylines were evident last week in the coverage. The role of Michelle Obama filled 9% of the campaign newshole, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for June 16-22. And President Bush’s relationship with the GOP hopeful filled another 7% of the newshole. That was enough to account for nearly one-sixth of the campaign coverage studied by PEJ’s weekly news index. (For the record, Cindy McCain’s role also accounted for 4% of last week’s coverage. Some of it involved her responding to questions about Michelle Obama. And there was even a mini-flap over allegations that the potential GOP First Lady borrowed a cookie recipe she submitted to Family Circle magazine.) Together, these storylines exceeded in scale the more basic campaign news events last week. The big policy debate in the news was the argument over energy and offshore drilling, which filled 11% of the campaign newshole. Coverage of fundraising, driven by Obama’s decision to opt out of public financing, accounted for another 12%. And Al Gore’s endorsement of Obama made up 10% of the coverage.
This week’s report marks a change in emphasis for the Campaign Coverage Index. During the primary season, the principal focus was on the competition for exposure among the candidates. That was measured by the number of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). Now that the general election season has begun, the CCI is also highlighting another facet of the coverage, the campaign storylines of the week, the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage. They are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole. We will also continue to track the quantity of coverage generated by the leading candidates. The CCI is an addition to PEJ’s ongoing News Coverage Index, which tracks all the topics in the news and which will continue to appear at the bottom of the CCI. Overall, the campaign accounted for 23% of the overall newshole in the week of June 16-22, equaling the lightest week of coverage in 2008 to date, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. During the final week of the long Democratic nomination fight (June 2-8), the campaign accounted for a full 50% of all coverage. But in the two weeks since then, that level has dropped significantly, suggesting an early-summer easing of press attention to the initial phases of the general election. The campaign last week was the No. 1 story in the newspaper, cable and radio sector. But while it only accounted for 12% of the front-page newspaper coverage, the race again got a big boost from the extensive attention in cable (47% of the newshole studied) and radio (33%) platforms. For much of last week, Michelle Obama felt the hot glare of the media spotlight. An Ivy League-educated lawyer and key surrogate for her husband, she had already generated an ongoing controversy for campaign remarks during the primary season that included the phrase “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Some critics interpreted that comment as evidence of a lack of patriotism. One popular rumor, officially debunked by the Obama campaign, claimed that a tape existed showing her making angry statements about “whitey.”
Part of that new introduction was a June 18 appearance on “The View,” a show that is something of a rite of passage for celebrities, and particularly female celebrities, in the news. There she engaged her co-panelists in a “fist bump,” the gesture she executed with her husband on the night he claimed the Democratic nomination—one that caused an overheated commentator to ask whether it was some kind of terrorist greeting. A June 19 Today show segment—captioned “Image Control”—more explicitly examined the campaign’s effort to re-introduce Michelle Obama to America. Or as the report put it, to sell “the Michelle Obama brand.” In an interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, co-host Meredith Vieira noted that “some people says that [Obama is] unpatriotic, an angry black woman.” Goodwin, who compared her stylistically to Jacqueline Kennedy, argued that Michelle Obama could overcome those concerns by being visible and open. “I think the more we know,” Goodwin observed, “then the less that little comment [“proud of my country”] will stick up like a mountain.” If Obama seems a remarkably appealing, gifted speaker, but hard to know, it may be that people around him—from his wife to possibly others—will continue to be examined as a way to answer the question: Who is Barack Obama—really? For his part, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s challenge involves navigating his relationship with his party’s leader, President Bush. McCain has, at times, sought to distance himself from an unpopular President whose approval ratings have hovered around 30%. The complexity of that relationship was apparent last week as McCain released an ad declaring how he “stood up” to Bush on global warming while the two men took the same position on offshore oil drilling. The June 17 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball highlighted the Bush issue when the panel reviewed several new ads. One, by the candidate himself, stressed independence, declaring that “John McCain stood up to the President and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago.” That message ran head on into the theme of a new ad by the liberal group MoveOn.org that featured actor John Cusack. Ticking off issues on which McCain and Bush agreed, Cusack said, “You think you can tell President Bush apart from John McCain...Go to MoveOn.org and take the Bush-McCain challenge. Bet you can’t tell them apart.”
That subject was the focus of a June 17 front-page New York Times piece declaring that “The Democrats like to say that electing Senator John McCain would usher in the third term of George W. Bush…The Republicans counter that calling the senator McBush is political spin and that Mr. McCain is his own man.” And now, in the rest of the week’s news: For the second week in a row, the violent storms and deadly flooding in the Midwest generated major attention from the media. For the week of June 16-22, it was the No. 2 story, filling 16% of the overall newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. The destructive weather was the top story in two sectors last week—online (23%) and network news (22%). That was followed by gas and oil prices (6%) and the U.S. economy, also at 6%. Rounding out the top 5 story list was the U.S. effort in fighting terrorism (4%), a topic driven by several events, most notably the passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of a new terrorism surveillance bill. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Campaign Storylines of the Week
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
In the first official week of the general
 election, the differences between Barack Obama and John McCain on issues ranging from the economy to Iraq constituted the media’s main campaign narrative. Together, the debates over several key issues accounted for almost one-third—29%—of the campaign newshole, as measured by PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for June 9-15.
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a fair amount of attention paid to some controversies and gaffes. Led by coverage of the resignation of Obama’s vice-presidential search leader James Johnson, a handful of controversies finished second behind the issues (at 18%) as a narrative theme last week. Trailing in third place (at 13%) was coverage of the candidates’ efforts to heal the wounds left by the primary battles—particularly the bruising Democratic contest. In a relatively light week of campaign coverage, Obama topped McCain in the race for exposure. The Democrat appeared as a significant or dominant newsmaker in 77% of the week’s campaign stories compared with 55% for the GOP candidate. The week also represented the moment that Hillary Clinton appeared to finally recede from center stage. A week removed from her withdrawal speech, Clinton was a significant or dominant factor in only 10% of the stories. Those numbers reflect the media’s full pivot away from the long Democratic primary battle to a one-on-one general election competition. A week earlier, Clinton registered in 60% of the coverage while McCain was at 21%. One other change was the focus on potential First Ladies. In that previous report, Michelle Obama registered at only 1%; last week, she accounted for 6%.
The focus on issues last week may mark a shift in the campaign, at least for now, away from the horse race—will Clinton drop out, will there be reconciliation—toward the emphasis on the two party nominees trying to contrast themselves. Those policy questions were led by the economy (18% of the newshole), and also included gas prices (6%), Iraq (5%), and health care and immigration (both less than 1%). In general, our sense was that this coverage distributed fairly evenly between the two candidates.
On the subject of healing primary wounds and uniting their parties, it was Obama and the Democrats again getting most of the headlines. Coverage of the suspension of Clinton’s campaign (6%), the divided Democrats (3%), the post-mortem on Clinton’s loss (less than 1%) and questions about Bill Clinton’s role (less than 1%) and the superdelegates (less than 1%) accounted for 10% of the newshole. McCain’s attempts to unite his party accounted for 3%. So while Obama dominated the coverage last week, some of that was clearly unwelcome—the result of an embarrassing flap over Johnson and the continuing fallout from a tough and polarizing primary fight that left many hard feelings. The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate splayed a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. Last week’s campaign week began with coverage of the Republican and Democratic candidates exchanging charges over the economy. “Barack Obama attacked John McCain for advocating corporate tax cuts at a time big oil is making record profits,” declared Katie Couric on the June 9 CBS newscast. The “McCain camp fired back, accusing Senator Obama of voting for Vice President Cheney’s energy bill, which included billions in tax subsides for oil companies…”
The next day, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette featured a front page that included a story about gas hitting four dollars a gallon, a story about how high gas costs are impeding state road repairs, and a story about McCain and Obama arguing over economic policy. Some coverage of Iraq policy differences revolved around McCain’s June 11 appearance on NBC’s Today show. When host Matt Lauer’s asked if he had a better sense of when U.S. troops could return from Iraq, McCain said, “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.” That brought a quick response from the Obama campaign with his surrogate, Senator John Kerry, charging that those remarks showed McCain to be "unbelievably out of touch and inconsistent with the needs and concerns of Americans." Although that exchange illustrated substantive policy differences between the two candidates, it was also examined for its potential political impact on programs such as the June 11 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball. There the rough consensus of the pundit panel seemed to be that McCain had not chosen his words wisely, but that he benefited from any discussion of national security. Yet the controversy over Obama aide James Johnson also boiled for a good part of the week. The veteran Washington insider left Obama’s vice presidential search team on June 11 after what the New York Times called “days of intense scrutiny” from the media and Republicans over favorable mortgages he received from Countrywide, “a central player in the subprime lending crisis.” Johnson’s departure, the June 12 Times story declared, “highlights the difficulties” Obama has “in trying to live up to his promises to remain independent of the Washington establishment and the special interests that populate it.” The challenges Obama faces in his search for a VP were not limited to the Johnson story last week. A June 9 CNN.com piece discussing the reluctance of some Clinton voters to support Obama cited a poll indicating that only 60% said they would vote for him in November. “Some of Clinton’s top supporters,” the story went on to note, “say the best way to get the New York Senator’s 18 million voters behind Obama is by putting Clinton on the ticket.” And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Aside from the campaign, flooding in Iowa, the sudden death of a television news icon, and a major Supreme Court ruling were among the top stories last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for June 6-15. The violent Midwestern storms, the No. 2 story, filled 10% of the newshole last week. Rising gas and oil prices came next at 7%. That was followed by coverage of the June 13 death of NBC Washington bureau chief and Meet the Press host Tim Russert, at 5%. Due to extensive tributes and remembrances, especially on MSNBC where he frequently appeared, Russert’s passing filled 18% of the cable airtime examined last week. And the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention, viewed as a rebuke of the Bush administration, rounded out the top 5 stories, also at 5% Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate/Political Figure
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
On the same night that Barack Obama made history by
 clinching his party’s nomination and John McCain kicked off the general election with a prime-time policy address, it was the vanquished Democrat who may have posed the most relevant question.
In a spirited non-concession speech at Manhattan’s Baruch College, Hillary Clinton gave public voice to the issue that resonated throughout the media for much of the week. “What does Hillary want?” The answer is, she won’t say yet. In the final week of the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Obama was the top newsmaker. In all he appeared as a dominant or significant factor in 77% of the campaign stories, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for June 2-8. That was his highest single-week total for the year. Clinton trailed him in the battle for exposure, a major figure in 60% of stories. (An analysis of primary-season coverage from Jan. 6 through June 8 reveals that on an average week, Obama registered in 57% of the coverage compared to 50% for Clinton. McCain trailed badly at 27%.)
A look at the themes in last week’s coverage helps tell the story. The subjects of Clinton as a possible vice-presidential nominee filled 16% of all last week’s campaign stories studied; the decision to suspend her campaign filled another 9%; and calls for her to withdraw made up another 4%; Thus the themes around “what does Hillary want” alone accounted for 29% of all last week’s campaign coverage studied. The theme of Obama, the first African-American to become a major party nominee for President, emerging as a historic candidate, by contrast, accounted for 7%. Just over 2% of the coverage was devoted to Obama’s search for a vice president other than Clinton, and another 3% to lingering controversies involving the Trinity Church in Chicago.
(When the list is compiled of “journalists” who had an impact on this campaign, Mayhill Fowler’s name will be on it. A 61-year-old blogger for the Huffington Post, Fowler broke the story of Obama’s remarks at a fundraiser about “bitter” voters who “cling” to guns or religion. And she triggered Clinton’s attack on Purdum by shouting a question to him in a rope line. Fowler’s blurring of the lines between journalist and citizen is certain to fuel the debate over standards and practices in the new media universe. But she can lay claim to two significant scoops and the attention that brings. In recent days, Fowler managed a major media trifecta, being profiled in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post.) GOP nominee John McCain made some news of his own this week by delivering a major speech in Louisiana in which he expressed his own vision of change in this election. And he issued a challenge for Obama to meet him in a series of 10 town hall meeting-style debates. But with the media glued to the end of the Democratic battle, he was a significant or dominant factor in only 21% of stories studied, his lowest level in a month. Overall, by filling 50% of the newshole last week, the campaign generated its third- highest level of weekly coverage in 2008, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from June 2-8. (The biggest week, coming in at 55% of the newshole, was Feb. 4-10, the Super Tuesday primary period.) As has typically been the case, the media sectors devoting the most time to the campaign last week where those that included the opinion-driven talk shows. The election consumed a full 74% of the airtime studied on cable and 58% of the airtime on radio.
Last week began with the Clinton forces still talking about victory and perseverance. During the June 2 edition of CBS’ Early Show, one day after a big Clinton win in Puerto Rico, host Harry Smith asked campaign chair Terry McAuliffe about her intentions. “Listen, we’ve said that we’ll keep all our options open,” McAuliffe responded. “Hillary Clinton wins all the swings states…This is about winning in November.” After the June 3 Montana and South Dakota primaries helped Obama reach the magic number of delegates, Clinton declined to acknowledge him as the nominee during a speech in which supporters urged her to battle on to the Denver convention. “No Concession,” said the page 1 headline in the June 4 San Francisco Chronicle. Inside the story, there was speculation about her ultimate strategy: “Even now, the nomination in hand, Obama finds himself dogged by a new Clinton challenge that she join his ticket.” The news that Clinton, under considerable pressure, had decided to formally suspend her campaign and endorse Obama did not end the questions or speculation. On the June 6 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews discussed Clinton’s next moves. “One, she’ll officially bow out of the presidential race,” he noted. “Two, she’ll support Obama. And three, well that’s the question. What then? Will she fully endorse Obama? Does she want to be VP? Will she go back to the Senate…Or will she start planning for her next presidential race?” Clinton’s valedictory June 7 speech in Washington in which she threw her support to her rival raised yet another question as fodder for the media narrative. Would her passionate supporters, many of whom complained of sexism and media bias in the campaign, follow her lead? The June 8 Washington Post report on the speech noted that some of her backers in the audience booed at the mention of Obama’s name while bathing her in adulation. “The crowd’s undiminished enthusiasm was of indication of the challenges facing Obama,” the story declared. Thus, the week ended on a theme that will no doubt surface frequently in the coverage of the general election campaign. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: No story came close to competing with the election campaign last week. The second-biggest story, according to the News Coverage Index for June 2-8, was the continuing rise in gas and oil prices, filling 4% of the newshole. The troubled U.S. economy, a mainstay of recent coverage, was next at 3%. The arraignment of terror suspects, including alleged 9/11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, made U.S. efforts to combat terrorism the fourth-biggest story at 2%. And the death of rock n’ roll legend Bo Diddley was fifth at 2%. Thanks to the front-page obituaries that marked his passing, that sad event generated more coverage in newspapers (5%) than any other sector. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate/Political Figure
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index  As has been the case for about a month, the media’s campaign narrative last week proceeded on two tracks. Track one was the fiercely passionate endgame to the Democrats’ long and hard-fought nomination battle. The other was the developing general election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama. And in that story line, the Iraq war began to move back onto center stage.
On the Democratic primary side, matters came to a head on May 31 with a televised session of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules & Bylaws Committee as it decided how to count the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries The next day’s Puerto Rico primary—won in a landslide by Hillary Clinton—was treated by the media largely as an anti-climatic vote that did not derail the expectation that Obama would soon claim the requisite number of delegates. As he has in most weeks, Obama led Clinton in the race for media exposure, appearing as a significant or dominant newsmaker in 66% of the campaign stories compared with 45% for Clinton, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for May 26-June 1. A good chunk of that coverage late in the week came from another pastor problem, with Obama resigning from his church after Father Michael Pfleger made mocking remarks about Clinton there. All told, Obama’s latest church flap accounted for 13% of all the campaign stories last week. But even more of the narrative drama last week revolved around the results of the DNC deliberations, which accounted for 16% of the week’s campaign stories. The distribution of delegates—which gave Clinton 24 more than Obama from those two states—left some of her supporters fighting mad. (The June 1 New York Times reported that one such backer inside the meeting room yelled out “McCain in 08! No-bama!”) Moreover, by week’s end the press was still speculating about whether Clinton would concede within days or possibly take the fight to the floor of the convention.
Many in the media have noted the dramatic drop-off in Iraq coverage in recent months, a trend substantiated in PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (For example, in May 2008, war coverage filled 3% of the overall newshole compared to 19% the same month a year earlier.) But the tone and tenor of last week’s exchanges between McCain and Obama suggest the war will emerge as a hot topic again in the general election. “The discussion about Iraq, largely sidelined during the primary battle, is likely to factor prominently in the general election,” declared a May 29 story posted on the AOL site that detailed the two candidates’ differences on the conflict. By accounting for only 27% of the newshole last week as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index, campaign coverage equaled its second-lowest level of the year. Last week’s blockbuster news that Scott McClellan, the formerly tight-lipped White House press aide, had written a memoir scathingly critical of the Bush administration was the No. 2 story, finishing at 14% of the newshole. The hot political story diverted some of the attention of the pundits and political writers who usually devote their full energies to the election.
If the consensus in media and political circles is right that the Democratic primary fight will effectively be over within days, then perhaps the most significant campaign story last week was the developing battle over Iraq policy between McCain and Obama. The week started with both candidates making Memorial Day appearances in New Mexico. Obama and McCain offered “starkly different approaches to the war in Iraq…in a state that could help decide” the election, declared NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the May 27 Today show as she spelled out the divergent views of McCain, a staunch backer of the Iraq engagement, and Obama, an advocate for withdrawal. That same day, the Fox News Channel covered another aspect of the issue, as it reported on a small group of anti-war protestors who heckled McCain during a speech in Denver. “John McCain was trying to discuss nuclear security. But there was a group of people who clearly thought their freedom of speech trumps everyone else’s,” observed Fox anchor E. D. Hill. The confrontation over Iraq deepened when McCain invited Obama to travel to Iraq with him, claiming that much progress has been made in the two years since the Democrat last visited. “For him to talk about dates for withdrawal, which is basically surrender in Iraq after we’re succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable,” said McCain as quoted in an AP story. The Obama campaign responded by calling that invitation for a joint visit a “political stunt.’
As numerous commentators have noted, Iraq seems to be an issue that both candidates think benefits them. The expectation is that the McCain campaign will use it to depict Obama as inexperienced and naïve about global threats while the Obama campaign will try and inextricably link McCain with an unpopular president, George Bush, prosecuting an unpopular war. Last week the political skirmishing over Iraq escalated noticeably. But that is probably only a preview of what awaits voters in the fall campaign. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: With former colleagues denouncing him as a turncoat and McClellan hitting the media circuit to defend himself, the political firestorm surrounding his book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” propelled the story to No. 2 last week (at 14%), as measured by the News Coverage Index. It was a particularly hot topic on cable news, where it filled 28% of the newshole. (The campaign filled 43% on cable.) After that, there was a significant drop-off to the third-biggest story, the continuing aftermath of the earthquake in China, at 3%. That was followed by the U.S. economy (3%) and events inside Iraq (also 3%). Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate/Political Figure
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
For all that, the dominant media narrative on the state of the race remained the same—that Obama was on the cusp of securing a hard-fought nomination. That storyline has been unchanged since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6, when the pundits declared the race over for all practical purposes. It was reiterated the morning after last week’s primaries. “Unless some kind of lightning strikes,” George Stephanopoulos asserted on ABC’s Good Morning America, “Barack Obama is the nominee.” What did change noticeably in the media’s campaign narrative last week was the role of presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. After largely being treated as a bystander to the Democrats’ battle for weeks, he emerged to become a central newsmaker and featured player in the coverage.
Two weeks ago, the Republican got back in the news (at 27%) when President Bush’s remarks about appeasement triggered a pointed foreign policy exchange between Obama and McCain. Last week, that argument over whether to talk with enemies of the U.S. continued to rage. But McCain was also the catalyst for a number of other major campaign stories. They ranged from his departing advisors with lobbying connections to the vice presidential hopefuls arriving at his Arizona home, from his repudiation of a controversial pastor to his release of medical records.
When you add up the story lines that directly involved McCain—the foreign policy fight, the Rev. John Hagee flap, his health records, the GOP veepstakes, and the lobbying controversy—they add up to one-third of last week’s campaign stories. McCain’s central role in the campaign narrative last week seems to reflect both his and the press’s sense that even if the Democratic race is not officially over, the general election campaign has begun. It also suggests that exposure is not always a reflection of wanted or positive attention. Overall last week, coverage of the race for the White House filled 37% of the newshole, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for May 19-25—a fairly typical level of campaign coverage in recent weeks. It easily dominated the news agenda, with word of Senator Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor diagnosis finishing a distant second at 8%. The campaign was the No. 1 story in all five media sectors, but as is typically the case, it was most prevalent by far in the cable TV coverage (65% of the newshole) and in the radio sector (49%), which includes the radio talk hosts. The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. The week started off with McCain having to deal with the flap that arose after a number of lobbyists departed his campaign, as a candidate with the reformer reputation moved to defuse concerns he was tied too closely to insular Washington interests. By dealing with that issue now, the McCain campaign may have dealt with a potential problem before the media scrutiny became more intense. On the May 19 edition of the CBS evening newscast, correspondent Chip Reid declared that McCain’s “reputation as a reformer took a hit over the past week. Five campaign staffers resigned because of their ties to lobbyists…The latest to go is one of McCain’s top fundraisers.”
In another significant way, however, the Hagee and Wright controversies differed. At its height, during the period from April 28-May 4, the Wright story accounted for a full 42% of that week’s campaign stories. Last week, at what to date is its apex, the Hagee episode accounted for only 8% of the election coverage. On a more positive note for him, McCain also made news by inviting three potential vice presidential hopefuls—Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney—to a weekend barbecue in Arizona. While his aides stressed the informal nature of the get-together, a May 22 New York Times story noted that the McCain “is known as a social and gregarious candidate and senator, and his associates said personal chemistry would be a crucial consideration in his choice.” A cancer survivor, the 71-year-old McCain also attempted to neutralize his health as a potential issue by opening up his medical records late last week. Aside from learning that the candidate takes the popular sleep aid Ambien and has had some small kidney stones, the public also found out that the official prognosis was good. As CNN.com story on May 23 reported that, “a team of doctors from the Mayo Clinic declared Friday that there appears to be no physical reason why Sen. John McCain, the 71-year-old presumed Republican presidential candidate, could not carry out the duties of the office.” In a week that saw McCain face his share of good and bad headlines, that story was just what the doctor ordered. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: The sudden and sobering announcement that Senator Ted Kennedy’s seizures turned out to be caused by a malignant brain tumor was the second-biggest story last week, accounting for 8% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (That story got the most attention on network TV news, where it filled 15% of the newshole.) Next came the continued coverage of rising gas and oil prices (6%). The Chinese earthquake, with its updated toll of nearly 90,000 dead and missing, was next at 5%. And a Texas appeals court ruling that the state was wrong to separate hundreds of children seized at the polygamist compound from their parents helped make that case the fifth-biggest story (4%) last week. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
A man who had trouble getting the media
 to pay attention to his presidential bid finally generated a lot of headlines last week. When he showed up to endorse Barack Obama at a Michigan rally on May 14, John Edwards not only made news, he helped change the story line.
The splash was substantial. After backing his former rival for the Democratic nomination, by week’s end Edwards was a dominant or significant figure in 10% of the campaign coverage, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for May 12-18. That is more coverage than the former Senator managed to attract in three of the four weeks in January when he was still a candidate—and more than he got the week he dropped out. And in embracing Obama less than 24 hours after Clinton’s big win in West Virginia, Edwards diverted media attention away from a discussion of renewed Clinton momentum and helped refocused the narrative on Obama’s apparent inevitability. In doing so, Edwards also helped Obama win the race for exposure last week. Overall, Obama was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 68% of the campaign coverage, well ahead of Clinton, who finished at 53%. And their coverage was very different. Despite her 41-point win in West Virginia, her narrative included considerable speculation about how long she would stay in the race and whether she might end up as Obama’s vice president.
If one were to combine the top four story lines in last week’s campaign coverage—the appeasement furor (21% of all the campaign stories), the Edwards endorsement (10%), calls for Clinton to drop out (6%) and speculation about Obama’s vice-president (2%)—that’s almost 40% of the coverage reinforcing the idea that the Democratic primary race was over.
On the Republican side, McCain, who was caught in the Bush-Obama crossfire, was a significant or dominant factor in 27% of the coverage last week, far behind the Democrats. Nonetheless, that was still his highest level of press attention since April 7-13. Part of it came from a speech anticipating the end of his first term in which the GOP candidate predicted victory in Iraq, the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden and economic growth at home. Meanwhile, another Republican (or former Republican) got some coverage last week. Bob Barr, the former GOP Congressman from Georgia, announced his presidential candidacy on the Libertarian ticket. That triggered some speculation about whether he could siphon some support from McCain. So far, the early signs are not that promising. Barr registered at 2% in the coverage, a sign perhaps that the media does not expect him to have much impact. In all, the presidential campaign accounted for 37% of the overall newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for the period of May 12-18. Despite a number of significant breaking events, including the devastating earthquake in China and the continuing destruction from the Myanmar cyclone, the race for the White House consumed 74% of the airtime studied on the cable news networks last week, fully twice as much as in the media generally. The next-biggest story, the disaster in China, filled only 4% of the cable newshole even as it proved to be the No. 1 story (at 21%) on network television broadcast news. The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI.
And Clinton’s whopping West Virginia win over Obama did not play out in the press the way her campaign had hoped. A May 14 AP story carried on Yahoo News! said the result did “expose in stark terms his disadvantage with blue-collar voters, fueling Clinton's last-gasp argument to party VIPs that she's the Democrat with broad appeal against Republican John McCain.” But it also reported that right after the primary, “Obama picked up two more superdelegates, offering fresh recognition from Democratic leaders of his inevitable nomination.” The next morning on NBC’s Today show, it was the Edwards endorsement that obscured the West Virginia vote. “Just as she was trying to get back on her feet, Hillary Clinton had the rug pulled out from under her,” reported correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She noted that the move not only raised the possibility of Obama collecting Edwards’ delegates and improving his standing among blue-collar voters, it also succeeded in diluting the impact of a series of TV interviews that Clinton had granted. “This,” Mitchell intoned, “is the moment Hillary Clinton had hoped would not happen.” By the end of the week, the story was not Obama versus Clinton, but instead Obama versus Bush and McCain. The May 16 CBS evening newscast led with a report from correspondent Dean Reynolds that Obama had delivered “one of the most pugnacious speeches” in his career in response to Bush’s statement criticizing “appeasement” of terrorists and radicals. The CBS account featured excerpts from Obama’s speech in which he said that “both Bush and McCain represent the failed foreign policy and fear-mongering of the past.” In introducing that segment, anchor Katie Couric told viewers, “It is only May in this campaign, but it’s beginning to feel like October.” For an Obama campaign intent on sending a strong message that the primary fight is over, that media narrative is music to their ears. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: For the second week in a row, a deadly natural disaster was the second-biggest story of the week, behind the campaign for the White House. The Chinese earthquake, that to date has reportedly killed more than 30,000 people, accounted for 13% of the coverage for the week of May 12-18, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. The Myanmar cyclone, which generated 15% of the previous week’s coverage, fell to 4% last week, but was still the No. 3 story. Coverage of same-sex marriage, sparked by a California Supreme Court ruling allowing those unions, was next at 3%. That was followed by concerns over the rising price of gas and oil, also at 3%. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
We now know who the Democratic nominee In a campaign with more twists than a Twilight Zone episode, the media all but officially pronounced Obama the Democratic nominee last week after he emerged with a big win in North Carolina and a near-tie in Indiana. There are only a handful of Democratic primary contests left. And the consensus was that Hillary Clinton needed a stronger showing on May 6 to change the increasingly insurmountable-looking pledged delegate math and/or the superdelegates who have been steadily migrating to Obama. Ironically, in the week that calls for her to drop out grew louder, Clinton generated her highest level of coverage this year. According to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index, she was a significant or dominant factor in 70% of the campaign stories from May 5-11. Obama was a close second, at 67%. But at only 12%, Republican John McCain ended up with his lowest level of coverage in 2008. One other narrative also began to suggest itself last week in the coverage. Even though McCain has been virtually relegated to the role of bystander as the Democrats battled on, that may soon change. Late last week, coverage began to focus on Obama’s pivot away from his race with Clinton toward a campaign against the presumptive GOP nominee. That was a theme of a May 11 New York Times story noting that “Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are already drawing up strategies for taking each other on in the general election, focusing on the same groups — including independent voters and Latinos — and about a dozen states where they think the contest is likely to be decided this fall, campaign aides said.”
But the May 6 primaries changed the story line. Even if the so-called split decision in Indiana and North Carolina was expected, many pundits and journalists concluded that Clinton’s path to the nomination had gone from daunting to nearly impossible. Part of this involved expectations. Some analysts had begun to wonder if Obama might be losing momentum and altitude. But his large margin in North Carolina and neck-and-neck finish in Indiana—which ran counter to what many late polls suggested—reinforced the sense that nothing fundamental had changed in the dynamic of a race he has led since February. Another factor in the media narrative was simply evaluating the numbers projecting forward. A key moment occurred when analysts such as NBC’s Chuck Todd concluded that even if Clinton were given the disputed totals in Michigan and Florida, she would still be behind in delegates and popular votes.
Looking more closely at the coverage last week, the single biggest component, at 9% of all the campaign stories studied, dealt with calls for Clinton to end her campaign. When you add that together with the superdelegate deliberations (7% of the coverage), the divided Democrats theme (4%), and continued questions about the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations (2%), more than one in five campaign stories last week still highlighted the Democrats’ as-yet unhealed divisions. Overall, campaign coverage last week accounted for 46% of the newshole, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for May 5-11. That made it the biggest single week of election coverage since March 3-9, the week of the Ohio and Texas votes. In what is now a familiar pattern, cable news devoted the most attention (75% of the airtime studied) to the race with radio coming next at 56%. The campaign was the top story in four media sectors, but online, at 29%, it finished a close second behind the deadly Myanmar cyclone (31%). The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. The week of the North Carolina and Indiana showdowns began with the media highlighting a Clinton message that seemed successful in Ohio and Pennsylvania, one honed by public displays of whiskey drinking and public embraces of guns and hunting. “She has repackaged herself as a working-class hero,” said ABC’s Jake Tapper on that network’s election eve May 5 newscast. “Meet the new populist Hillary Clinton,” he added. “In this narrative, Obama is the elitist [and] the goal of course, is to win over the support of white, working class voters.” One element of Clinton’s populist approach, her call for a gas-tax holiday that was vocally opposed by Obama, came in for serious criticism from economists and the media. And in the May 6 post-mortems, some analysts wondered if she had hurt herself politically with what columnist Charles Krauthammer called “a cheap gimmick.”
That night’s CBS newscast began focusing on exit strategies for Clinton, with correspondent Jim Axelrod reporting that “several top advisers are suggesting that she stay in through West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon and then, in two weeks, gracefully bow out.” In a companion piece, Jeff Greenfield wondered about the kind of “inducements that might persuade Clinton to step aside”—including offers ranging from paying off campaign debt to a major convention speaking role. As the week wore on, with no sign of any major change of heart on the part of her campaign, the Clinton narrative began to emphasize her desire to keep fighting—at least for now. “Clinton says she’s still in it” was the headline on the May 8 Philadelphia Inquirer story reporting that she may have raised $1 million at a fundraiser the previous evening. But at the same time, coverage of Obama indicated that he was beginning to move past the primary fight toward a November contest with McCain. One dustup that made headlines occurred when Obama accused McCain during a CNN interview of “losing his bearings.” The McCain camp fired back, saying that Obama—by using the phrase “losing his bearings”—was trying to make an issue of the candidate’s age. The Obama camp responded by blasting McCain for a strategy of “distract and attack.” This exchange, covered on the May 9 edition of Brit Hume’s Fox News Channel show, seemed to be ushering in a new post-primary phase in which Obama and McCain would be the main combatants and Clinton the bystander. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Although the campaign dominated coverage last week, the tragic Myanmar cyclone that has taken tens of thousands of lives finished second, at 15% of the newshole measured by the Project’s News Coverage Index for May 5-11. Next came stories about the troubled U.S. economy (5%), the issue of immigration (2%) and rising gas and oil prices (2%). That made Myanmar one of the biggest non-campaign stories of the year so far. Only the Eliot Spitzer scandal (23% of the newshole), the Pope’s visit to the U.S. (16%) and two weeks of economic news (19% and 16%) attracted more attention than the Myanmar natural disaster when it came to coverage of something other than the 2008 election. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
In a number of recent presidential campaigns,
 someone or something has emerged from obscurity to become a household word and an integral part of the media narrative. In the 1988 race it was a Massachusetts criminal named Willie Horton, and four years later, it was a former television reporter turned singer named Gennifer Flowers. In 2004, the name in the headlines was a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This year, at least so far, the newsmaker from nowhere is Chicago minister Jeremiah Wright.
Last week—as Wright re-emerged into full public view to speak to PBS’ Bill Moyers, the NAACP and the National Press Club—the controversy he generated made more news than both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Clinton was a significant or dominant factor in 41% of the campaign stories and McCain registered in 14% of them. Meanwhile the relationship between Wright and his former parishioner Obama accounted for 42% of the week’s campaign coverage. Obama, who moved to decisively denounce Wright last week, was the significant or dominant newsmaker in 69% of the stories, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4. These coverage numbers are strikingly similar to those from March 17-23 when Wright’s inflammatory statements about race and the U.S. triggered the first Obama damage control effort, including a major March 18 speech on race relations. That week, the Wright-Obama story line accounted for 37% of the campaign stories and Obama dominated coverage at 72%. Clinton (at 30%) and McCain (17%) were virtual afterthoughts.
As the primary voting has slowed, the media have focused on a number of Democratic campaign controversies—from Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers in Bosnia to Obama’s remarks about economically disadvantaged Americans being “bitter.” But none have had the staying power of the Wright flap. In the period from March 17 through May 4, the Wright-Obama story line made up 17%, or one out of six, of all the campaign stories studied. And last week saw the biggest spike yet in that coverage. There were significant policy issues at play in last week’s Democratic campaign leading up to the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Clinton and Obama sparred over how to handle Iran and the proposed gas-tax holiday. The issue of gas prices accounted for the second-biggest category of campaign stories last week at 7%. And the next biggest chunk of campaign coverage, at 5%, was Indiana superdelegate and former Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew switching his support from Clinton to Obama. But even after combining the gas and the Andrew coverage, that is less than one-third of the attention paid last week to Wright.
Overall, the presidential campaign accounted for 38% of the newshole in print, online, radio and television, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4. Once again it was cable television, with its insatiable appetite for election news and speculation that far outstripped any other media sector in coverage. The 70% of the cable airtime devoted to the campaign last week almost equaled the combined campaign newshole numbers for network TV (27%), online (22%) and in newspapers (22%). The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. As it ricocheted throughout the week, the Wright story struck numerous angles in the press coverage. What were Wright’s motives for potentially damaging the candidacy of a man he supports? How much political damage has been done? Was Obama’s denunciation sufficient? And then, as is almost always the case with a mega-story, the media’s role itself became an issue. After airing footage of Wright’s aggressive defense of himself at the National Press Club on his April 28 show, CNN’s Anderson Cooper—who dubbed the controversy “Hurricane Jeremiah”—mused that “for a guy who supports Barack Obama, he couldn’t be doing any more damage to his candidate, could he?”
The next night, on the CBS newscast, the subject was Obama’s denunciation of Wright, a far stronger response than what Obama delivered in his March 18 speech on race. That speech was praised for its nuance. This response was covered in more purely political terms. “Barack Obama shifted today into major damage control, all but severing his ties to the pastor he once defended,” declared anchor Katie Couric, while correspondent Dean Reynolds noted that Wright’s words had put the Obama campaign in a “defensive crouch.” On the May 1 edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” correspondent David Schaper canvassed voters in Hammond Indiana and found a variety of reactions. A retired roofer who supports Obama called Wright a “jerk” who may have damaged his candidate’s chances. An undecided retired steelworker said Wright’s words were making it harder for him to choose Obama. A former union president supporting Clinton declared that Wright’s views “had to sink in” on Obama during his 20 years in the church. But a retired steelworker, and Republican who is supporting Obama, asserted that a candidate should not be judged by his pastor. The next day, on May 2, the Times sampled sentiment from the second battleground state—getting reaction from black churches in North Carolina. There were various crosscurrents ranging from sympathy for Wright to offense at his remarks to something in between. “There’s some truth to the things Reverend Wright spoke about. And the Bible says the truth shall set you free,” one associate pastor told the paper. “But the Bible also says there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.” And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Aside from the campaign last week, news of the U.S. economy—driven last week by another interest rate cut and reports of very slow growth—was the second-biggest story, filling 10% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (In the first four months of the 2008, the troubled economy has been the No. 2 story, averaging 7% of the newshole per week) That was followed by events inside Iraq (3%) coverage of gas and oil prices (3%) and concerns about a global food shortage (2%). Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
The week began with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
 bashing each other with negative TV ads on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. It ended with the prospect of a longer, tougher contest after Clinton’s win, and with the volatile issue of race again occupying a prominent place in the media narrative.
Given that the coverage of the crucial April 22 Pennsylvania vote accounted for 53% of all the campaign stories, last week’s election news was utterly dominated by the Democrats. Obama was a dominant or significant newsmaker in 70% of the campaign stories, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for April 21-27. Clinton was close behind at 64%, generating her highest level of media attention this year. (Bill Clinton accounted for another 3%). In one sign of what was at stake for Democrats in Pennsylvania, a post-primary spin war erupted over Clinton’s actual margin of victory—and whether it reached the magic double-digit mark some pundits set as the yardstick for a big win for her. On April 23, a Huffington Post blogger wrote that “The official results for last night’s debate as of 12 noon Eastern time are: Hillary Clinton - 1,258,278 (54.7 percent) Barack Obama - 1,042,573 (45.3 percent)…When you subtract 45.3 from 54.7 you get 9.4.The last time I checked my use of statistical analysis, 9.4 isn't 10…So, why is the mainstream media reporting that Hillary won by "double digits?”
As the week rolled on, the Pennsylvania results spawned another story line: How big a factor is race playing in Obama’s problems with blue-collar Democrats? The recurring racial angle in this campaign was also rekindled by the resurfacing of Obama’s controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose interview with PBS host Bill Moyers quickly circulated throughout the media, making him a significant or dominant factor in 7% of the coverage. John McCain embarked on a tour of economically hard-hit areas of the nation last week and made some news with his harsh criticism of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. But overshadowed by events in Pennsylvania, McCain’s coverage continued its recent downward trajectory, dropping to 17% from 24% the previous week and from 35% the week of April 7-13.
Despite McCain’s struggle for attention, coverage of the campaign filled 44% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 21-27. That marked the highest level of weekly coverage since March 3-9, the period that included the key primary contests in Ohio and Texas. Once again, cable was the media sector that devoted the greatest proportion of its newshole—in this case 74% of the airtime studied—to the campaign. To illustrate how completely the race for the White House drove the media agenda last week, the second-biggest story—the troubled U.S. economy
The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. In the tactical analysis of the Pennsylvania vote—or what MSNBC dubbed “Spinnsylvania” –three main storylines emerged, different in tone but not mutually exclusive. One was enunciated on MSNBC when political director Chuck Todd declared that in the crucial delegate count, “nothing really changed at all…the pledged delegate count is going to be Obama’s.” Another one, more favorable to Clinton was in an AP story on Google News that asked, “Why can’t Obama close the deal? It’s a question Hillary Clinton and her surrogates raised throughout the last days of the caustic Pennsylvania primary contest.” A third theme, that of a continuing bloody primary struggle, was embedded in this headline in the April 24 Washington Post: “Continuing Battle Divides Democrats: Leaders to Seek End After Primaries to Avoid Further Damage.” Another narrative that also surfaced after Pennsylvania was the extent to which race played a role in the vote. Citing such statistics as Clinton’s level of support (75%) among the 13% of white Pennsylvania voters who said race was an important factor, ABC News national correspondent Claire Shipman said some numbers do “suggest what nobody really wants to think—that race may be an issue.” The racial temperature heated up further when African-American Congressman James Clyburn, an uncommitted super delegate, gave the New York Times an April 24 interview. In it, he called Bill Clinton’s campaign conduct “bizarre” and said many blacks were convinced the Clintons were trying to “damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”
At the same time, Rev. Wright, whose inflammatory remarks about race and the U.S. have dogged the Obama campaign, raised his public profile dramatically last week—giving the PBS an interview before speaking to the NAACP and at the National Press Club. By April 24, the PBS excerpts had been widely disseminated. Assessing the reappearance of the pastor in political terms for the Obama campaign, the April 25 Washington Times went with the headline, “Wright response at the wrong time?” Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain made some news of his own last week by blasting the response of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina. In an April 24 PBS NewsHour story on his tour of the still battered Ninth Ward in New Orleans, anchor Ray Suarez reported on McCain’s statement that had he been President , “he would have landed his plane immediately to survey the damage.” Even with that tough critique of President Bush, McCain found it hard to break through the din of Pennsylvania.
And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Last week, the drop-off between campaign coverage and the rest of the news menu was dramatic. The second biggest story, at only 4% of the newshole, was the troubled U.S. economy. The continued fallout from the raid on the Texas polygamist compound was next at 3%. Growing fears of a global food shortage driven by rising prices followed at 3% and a related subject—skyrocketing oil and gas prices—rounded out the top-five story list at 2% of the newshole. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
Last week, a major part of the media
 narrative about the 2008 campaign involved the media themselves—specifically ABC’s Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos and the April 16 debate they moderated in Philadelphia.
Two major story lines drove press coverage in the last full week before the long-awaited Democratic Pennsylvania primary. The first was continued fallout over Obama’s remarks that some economically struggling citizens get “bitter” and “cling” to guns or religion. That subject accounted for 25% of all the campaign coverage last week. The second major story line, which accounted for another 22% of the coverage, was the ABC debate, which sparked its own debate over whether Obama bore the brunt of too many gaffe and “gotcha” questions. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales, among the critical reviewers, criticized the moderators’ performances as “shoddy” and “despicable.” New York Times columnist David Brooks spoke for the opposing view when he lauded the questions, declaring that the “journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable.” In either event, the controversy marked the clearest example of the media being injected into the middle of the campaign since the much-criticized Feb. 21 New York Times story suggesting an improper relationship between John McCain and a female lobbyist.
After watching his media coverage climb recently, GOP candidate John McCain fell back to 24% last week, a drop of 11 points from the week before. (All told, the Democrats generated almost six times as many stories as the Republicans last week.) For McCain, that coverage was mixed. He received substantial attention for the economic plan he unveiled on April 15. But as the week went on, McCain found himself dealing not with fiscal policy, but with two lingering personal issues—his age and his temper.
By filling 31% of the overall newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 14-20, the campaign bounced back from the previous week, when it accounted for only 23%—the low water mark in 2008. It was the top story in four of the five media sectors, with the Pope’s visit topping the online coverage. And once again, the election story was driven by the intense coverage on cable—where it accounted for 51% of the airtime studied—and radio, where it filled 39%. The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. In recent weeks, with journalists decamped in Pennsylvania for a long single-state campaign, the media narrative has often shifted focus from one candidate to another. One week, a major question is whether Obama is tough enough to engineer a victory in a fierce and grueling campaign. Another week, the key issue is whether Clinton will listen to calls for her to drop out. One week, the media focus on the incendiary remarks of Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The next, the spotlight shines on Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers on a Bosnia trip. But this week, even as Obama generated more of the coverage, the two candidates were intertwined in the two big story lines. Obama’s “bitter” sentiments brought criticism from Clinton and a counterattack from Obama. A similar dynamic prevailed after the controversial debate, an event that both candidates tried to use as ammunition against the other.
The “bitter” comments quickly descended into a bitter fight between the Democratic rivals, as chronicled in the April 14 Philadelphia Inquirer. After Clinton called those remarks “elitist and divisive,” and expressed support for gun owners, Obama struck back by asserting that “She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley,” a reference to the famed female sharpshooter of the Old West. One night later, the CBS Evening News reported that a new Clinton ad playing on the controversy was part of a strategy “to hammer Obama relentlessly,” while the Illinois Senator fought back with a $2 million per week ad blitz of its own. The April 16 debate quickly engulfed not only the candidates, but the moderators too. With Obama frequently on the defensive—facing questions on everything from his failure to wear a flag pin to his relationship with Rev. Wright and former radical William Ayers—the encounter triggered considerable criticism in the mainstream media and blogosphere. “This was by far, the worst handled debate in the history of politics,” declared one poster on the ABC News web site. The uproar was loud enough that on April 18, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Who Lost the Debate? Moderators, Many Say.” Obama’s complaints about the lack of substantive questions in the debate triggered another skirmish between the candidates. Above a caption that read, “Democrats Gripe About Griping,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer noted on his April 18 show that “Hillary Clinton now suggests Barack Obama isn’t tough enough to be President based on his reaction to some difficult debate questions.” That elicited a countercharge of “blatant hypocrisy” by the Obama camp, which cited Clinton’s complaint at a previous debate that she was always being asked the first question. By week’s end, the debate over the debate had become another of the increasingly hostile exchanges between the two candidates. McCain made his own news last week by unveiling an economic plan on April 15 that included a temporary repeal of the federal gas tax during the summer, increasing the income tax exemption for dependents and cutting spending. In a lukewarm, at best, assessment on the NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell noted that “critics and some economists argue that McCain’s math is wrong.” The next day, the 71-year-old McCain found himself responding to remarks made by 75-year-old Democratic Congressman John Murtha that the presidency is “no old man’s job.” On Sunday April 20, the Washington Post published a page-one story examining McCain’s “temperament”—aka temper. The piece—which began with a five-paragraph account of a heated confrontation between McCain and fellow Senator Charles Grassley in 1992—weighed whether McCain’s famous temper made him “an erratic hothead” or “a firebrand who is resolute against the forces of greed and gutlessness.” There is little doubt that the question will be explored further by the media in the general campaign. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Pope Benedict XVI’s six-day trip to the U.S.—which included his dramatic meeting with victims of the clergy sexual abuse scandal—was the second biggest story of the week, filling 16% of the overall newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 14-20. (At 22% of the newshole, it was the top story online.) Next came coverage of the Texas polygamy raid (8%), which last week included the custody fight over more than 400 children removed from the compound. The economy followed at 5% of the newshole, just ahead of coverage of events inside Iraq, which registered at 3%. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index |
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The Gore endorsement is one reason why, for the second week in a row, Obama generated considerably more coverage than his rival McCain. From June 16-22, the Democrat was a significant or dominant factor in 76% of the campaign stories compared with 53% for McCain—numbers very similar to the previous week. Hillary Clinton registered in only 4% of the coverage last week.
With the general election race perhaps heading into something of a summer plateau, campaign coverage last week accounted for only 24% of the overall newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for June 9-15. That marks the second-lowest total for all of 2008, trailing only the week of April 7-13—which was part of the long run-up to the Pennsylvania primary—when it filled 23% of the newshole. Even on a relatively slow week, however, the election was the No. 1 story in four of the five media sectors, with the Midwest flooding finishing as top story on network TV. And once again, cable news led the way, devoting 39% of the airtime studied to the campaign.
But sometimes numbers don’t tell the full story—and last week was a case in point. Despite Obama’s edge in quantity of coverage, Clinton was clearly the driving force in a media narrative that focused largely on three questions. Would she fight on to the convention? Would she unconditionally support Obama? Would she seek the vice-presidential slot?
As part of the general election, storyline, McCain continued his recent emergence as a headline maker, registering as a dominant or significant factor in 36% of the coverage—his second highest total since late February. McCain’s uptick in coverage began several weeks ago, when President Bush’s appeasement speech drew the GOP candidate and Obama into an exchange over foreign policy. Last week, the McCain/Obama battle largely centered on one foreign policy issue—the war in Iraq—which accounted for 10% of the week’s election-related stories.
Appearing as a significant or dominant newsmaker in 41% of last week’s campaign stories, McCain still trailed Obama widely (62%) and Clinton narrowly (43%) in the competition for media exposure, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for May 19-25. But that 41% represents the Arizona Senator’s highest level of coverage since way back on Super Tuesday week (Feb. 4-10). As recently as the week of May 5-11, McCain was registering as a virtual afterthought, at a mere 12%.
Despite a West Virginia trouncing that might have deepened questions about Obama’s appeal to working-class whites, his narrative last week continued a theme that had emerged the previous week. Obama was depicted as shifting away from a primary contest toward a general election strategy. Not only was that story line reinforced by Edwards’ endorsement, it was bolstered by President Bush’s May 15 remarks in Israel criticizing “appeasement” that Obama saw as a direct attack. Obama responded with sharp criticism of Bush and McCain that seemed to offer a preview of the general election fight. For his role in that foreign policy dustup, the President registered at 12% in last week’s campaign coverage, his largest role in any week’s campaign narrative since PEJ began tracking that role.
Obama’s anointment as nominee-in-waiting comes almost three months after the media narrative established him as a frontrunner—albeit a tenuous one. That occurred the week of Feb. 11-17, when he won the Potomac primaries. But he was unable to land the knockout blow as Clinton won in Ohio and won at least the primary part of the contest in Texas on March 4 and then took Pennsylvania on April 22. In recent weeks, the narrative had Obama on the defensive, enmeshed in controversies over his remarks about “bitter” voters and over the inflammatory words of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (As recently as the week of April 28-May 4, the Wright-Obama relationship accounted for 42% of all campaign stories.)
Given his central involvement in both major story lines, Obama was the top newsmaker according to the Campaign Coverage Index from April 14-20. He was a significant or dominant factor in 76% of the campaign stories, a large leap from the previous week when he registered at 46%. Clinton, at 59%, trailed Obama, but even that was up a bit from her 56% total a week earlier.
