News IndexThe message from last week’s coverage of the presidential race was that the “Huckaboom” is in full bloom. “Mike Huckabee has capitalized on his Iowa surge and roared to the front of the Republican pack in South Carolina, largely on the strength of social conservatives frustrated with the crop of candidates,” declared a story posted Dec. 10 on CNN.com. “We’ve been on the stove simmering for about 11 months,” Huckabee said. “Somehow in the last two weeks, the lid blew off and the pot started boiling.” On CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Huckabee’s hiring of Ed Rollins to run his campaign was cited as another sign of a surge by a once prohibitive underdog now breathing down frontrunner Rudy Giuliani’s neck. For his part, Rollins compared his new client to the most hallowed icon in modern Republican Party history: “Governor Huckabee has probably inspired me as much as Ronald Reagan,” the new hire waxed about his new boss. The pastor, bass player, weight loss guru, and former Arkansas Governor was not the only story last week driving coverage of the presidential race, which reached its 2007 high water mark for the year. All told, the campaign filled 26% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s news coverage Index for Dec. 9-14. On the Democratic side, Oprah Winfrey’s appearances on the stump for Barack Obama—as well as some new poll numbers—fueled the story line that Obama was tightening his battle with frontrunner Hillary Clinton. But even with “the Oprah effect” generating major coverage last week, no narrative seemed more compelling than the improbable rise of Huckabee. (Newsweek’s Dec. 17 cover headline, “Holy Huckabee!” was a double entendre, referring both to the candidate’s overt religiosity and the stunning success, at least to this point, of his long shot campaign.) As PEJ’s “Invisible Primary” study of campaign coverage revealed, for the first five months of 2007, Huckabee was barely a speck on the media radar screen. In fact, he was the focus of fewer than a dozen of the 1,742 campaign stories examined in that study. Yet last week, Huckabee narrowly trailed only Hillary Clinton as the leading newsmaker in the coverage of any subject—finishing ahead of everyone from Barack Obama and George Bush to Oprah and George Mitchell. With Huckabee helping dominate headlines, the presidential campaign was the top News Index story Dec. 9-14 for the sixth time in seven weeks. Last week, it led all five media sectors. And as has been the case often, it generated the most attention on cable, where it filled fully 40% of the airtime studied. Rounding out the newshole last week, the release of Former Senator George Mitchell’s report naming scores of ballplayers allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs made steroids the second-biggest story, at 7%. That was followed by U.S. domestic terrorism—and the growing controversy over the destroyed terrorist interrogation tapes—which also registered at 7%. The fourth-biggest story was the series of winter storms that moved across the country (6%), followed in fifth place by events on the ground in Iraq (4%). Last week, the three different threads of the Iraq story—the Washington-based policy debate, the situation inside Iraq, and the war and the homefront—combined to account for only 5% of the newshole, one of the lowest Iraq coverage weeks of the year. That’s further evidence that a war that once dominated media coverage is ebbing significantly as a major news event. PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) For all the media attention the candidate now basks in—the “Huckaboom” or “Huckamania” as New York magazine dubbed it or even “Huckabee? Really?” as the New York Times offered—he also entered a new zone. It is the moment when the media, fueled in part by his rivals, stop and say this guy might win the nomination. Who the heck is he? It is the moment when the media go from covering a candidate to also scrubbing him. Last week, the ex-Arkansas Governor found himself on the defensive about everything from the freeing of a convicted rapist to comments he made about the Mormon religion. On Dec. 9, a front-page New York Times story highlighted this “new scrutiny of his record in Arkansas” by focusing on two cases from Huckabee’s past record. One was his role as governor in the release of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond who later sexually assaulted and murdered a woman. Another was his 1992 position that people with AIDS should be kept in isolation. Two nights later, warning that “when you go to the front in the polls, reporters start looking at your past,” NBC anchor Brian Williams introduced a story about Huckabee’s “unusual record of receiving gifts” as governor. The report, by correspondent Lisa Myers, documented some of the “hundreds of gifts, large and small,” that Huckabee accepted while in office. While those gifts weren’t deemed illegal, Myers noted that the State Ethics Commission had admonished Huckabee on numerous occasions. On Dec. 12, the talk was of another Huckabee controversy. Reviewing that day’s GOP debate in Iowa, Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith said the “biggest news” was Huckabee’s post-debate apology to Mitt Romney for remarks that appeared to be critical of Romney’s Mormon faith. Huckabee’s words, which appeared fairly high up in a Dec. 16 New York Times magazine profile, were actually in the form of a question: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” The next sentence in the Times article explained why everything Huckabee says is being examined so closely these days. “In this unpredictable primary season,” the story continued, “Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa — and beyond — is perhaps the greatest surprise.” Mitchell Plays Hardball Although presidential politics dominated the week, the revelations in the Mitchell report—which named nearly 90 players including superstar pitcher Roger Clemens and home run king Barry Bonds—was the No. 2 story of the week, at 7%. Even though this was really just a two-day story—Dec. 13 and 14—it commanded 10% of the airtime on cable. The scandal was also the third-biggest story (at 6%) in newspapers, proving it was newsworthy enough to merit front-page, rather than simply sports page coverage. The chief reaction was both shock and anger. That was evident by the reaction of the Boston Globe, which ran the headline, “A long star-studded drug roster,” stripped across the top of page 1 on Dec. 14. The take-no-prisoners opening paragraph summed up the report’s conclusion as “scores of purported drug cheats…subverted the integrity of the national pastime for nearly 20 years while major league owners and union bosses all but looked the other way…” The Dec. 13 CBS evening newscast opened with a graphic of a syringe stuck in a baseball while guest anchor Harry Smith intoned, “Tonight, the baseball hall of shame.” Correspondent Armen Keteyian reported that Mitchell’s investigation had concluded that “illegal drugs were part of the lineup of every team in baseball, beginning in the mid-1990s.” And despite all the big names ensnared in Mitchell’s net—including seven Most Valuable Players Award winners—the CBS story suggested the worst might not be over. “Might this be just the tip of the iceberg?” Smith asked Keteyian. “I don’t think there’s any question,” came the response. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: Most of daytime cable TV was not included in this week's sample from Wednesday, December 12, and Thursday, December 13, due to the coverage of the two Iowa presidential debates. However, MSNBC did not cover the Democratic debate on Thursday, so MSNBC afternoon programming was included for that day. Also, CBS radio news headlines from the morning of Thursday, December 13, were not included due to a technical error.
With polls showing Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—who touts himself as a “Christian leader”—vaulting past Romney in Iowa, the former Massachusetts Governor delivered a speech about faith and politics that invited comparisons to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 address dealing with his Roman Catholic faith. Kennedy’s address, now widely regarded as a political triumph, was delivered in an era when most Americans got their news and commentary once a day from the daily paper or the nightly network newscast. Romney’s speech was delivered in an era of instantaneous, ubiquitous punditry, and the reviews rolled in fast and furious. Among those offering a definite thumbs up was liberal pundit Bill Press on MSNBC on Dec. 6. “I thought Romney hit pretty much all the right notes today…He certainly looked presidential.” Another positive review came from Fox News Channel host and conservative radio talker Sean Hannity. “I thought he gave a phenomenal speech today,” Hannity declared. “He made it clear that he, like our Founding Fathers, is a man of faith…He made clear, like our Founding Fathers…that religion should not be forced out of the public square.” But that view was far from unanimous. On the Dec. 6 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, commentator and former Bush religion advisor David Kuo said Romney “went wrong where Kennedy went right…He tried to justify his own theology…He ended up trying to mainstream the Mormon faith in Christian circles and I think that’s going to lead to a huge theological discussion.” On Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was also critical, accusing Romney of “essentially trying to have it both ways…Let me tell you all about my faith...but don’t ask me too many questions about it cause it’s a little different from your faith.” With Romney’s high-stakes speech as a major story line, the 2008 presidential campaign was easily the leading talk show topic last week. It filled 34% of the airtime as measured by PEJ’s Talk Show Index for Dec. 2-Dec. 7 and was the lead subject on both the cable and radio talk shows. The race for the White House was also the No. 1 story in the week’s general News Index (at 19%). But the talk hosts had considerably more leeway than political reporters to offer up their personal opinions of Romney’s remarks. Given last week’s release of the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the U.S. conflict with Iran was the second hottest talk topic at 18% of the newshole. From there, it was a major drop to the third-biggest story, the immigration debate (5%). That was followed by U.S. domestic terrorism (5%) and the Iraq policy debate (4%). PEJ’s Talk Show Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index. The report released Dec. 3 that Iran had apparently halted its nuclear weapon program seemed at odds with some of the rhetoric from the Bush administration about the dangers posed by Tehran. And the ensuing talk show argument over the meaning and implications of the new intelligence broke down along pretty predictable ideological lines. On MSNBC, liberal Air America talk host Rachel Maddow asserted that the report was an embarrassing repudiation of the Bush White House. “This document essentially brands the words ‘liar’ or ‘fool’ on everybody who has casually and falsely asserted that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons,” she said. “And that includes the President and Vice-President.” For his part, Rush Limbaugh said he doubted the accuracy of the NIE conclusions. “You have to examine not just the motives of Iran. You’ve got to examine the motives and intent of the people at the NIE who put together this best guess.” Mall terror and terrorist tapes don’t connect in the talk universe While the NIE report paved the way for a heated debate over Iran policy between doves and hawks, two other big news stories last week were harder to adapt to the argument culture that defines the talk universe. The Dec. 5 mall massacre that claimed nine lives (including the shooter’s) was the third-biggest story in the general News Index last week, filling 7% of the newshole. Yet, at only 2%, it was the sixth-biggest topic in the talk show world, filling 2% of the newshole in the index. And only a few cable hosts, primarily CNN’s Lou Dobbs, covered the subject in the programming examined. One other story that, perhaps more surprisingly, didn’t grab real traction on the talk shows was the topic of terrorism (5%), which was driven by the explosive news that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations of Al Qaeda prisoners. Although this seemed to have the potential to become a lively subject to disagreement among the left and right, none of the radio hosts picked up on the topic. On the left, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann tried to make a cause celebre of the issue. But the key commentator on the other side of the political spectrum, Bill O’Reilly offered a nuanced view that seemed to illustrate the difficulty in making a full-fledged argument about the tapes. O’Reilly acknowledged that “we simply cannot have CIA people destroying records, without the knowledge of the boss,” he said. “If something is sensitive, you classify it, you don’t destroy it.” At the same time, the Fox News host made it clear his primary objection to the destroyed tapes was the propaganda victory it handed to critics of the U.S.
“People who hate America
now have another hammer,” O’Reilly lamented. “[They’ll say] ‘USA
is a torture country and American intelligence is a Gestapo,’ and on and on.”
4. U.S. Domestic Terrorism and Prevention - 5% 5. Iraq Policy Debate - 4% 6. Omaha Mall Shooting - 2% 7. U.S. Economy - 2% 8. Don Imus - 2% 9 tie. Global Warming - 1% 9 tie. Clinton Headquarters Hostage Situation - 1% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. 2008 Campaign - 19% 2. Iran - 11%3. Omaha Mall Shooting - 7% 4. U.S. Economy - 6% 5. U.S. Domestic Terrorism and Prevention - 5% 6. Winter Storms - 4% 7. Immigration - 2% 8. Venezuela Referndum - 2% 9. Events in Iraq - 2% 10. Iraq Policy Debate - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. At the time, the media were consumed by the news that the U.S. would be sending more troops into Iraq. And for the week of Jan. 7-12, the surge speech helped make the Washington-based policy debate over Iraq the biggest story, by far, in the country. Bush’s warning to Iran largely escaped the attention of journalists. As the year went on, and Congress and the White House battled for control of war policy, the debate over Iraq remained a top story. So far in 2007, it has filled about 8% of the newshole according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, making it the second-biggest story behind the presidential campaign. And even as tensions have mounted between the U.S. and Iran—over Iraq and Tehran’s nuclear program—that subject has been dwarfed by the Iraq debate. Thus far in 2007, the conflict with Iran has accounted for only 2% of the NCI newshole. But last week, in a sign of how circumstances and geopolitical threats have changed, a surprising new assessment of Iran’s nuclear program was the second-biggest story of the week, filling 11% of the newshole from Dec. 2-7. For the same week, coverage of the policy debate over Iraq, a conflict that has seen a recent drop-off in violence, fell to only 2% of the newshole. “U.S. Intelligence reversed itself today on Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” declared anchor Jim Lehrer in the opening moments of the Dec. 3 PBS NewsHour. The new National Intelligence Estimate—which seemed to allay fears about the near-term need for military action against Iran—concluded that Tehran had stopped work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003 and seemed “less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” While making clear that Iran’s intentions were still unclear, the report not only overrode previous intelligence that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.” It also appeared to challenge some of the more dire warnings about Iran’s capabilities and intentions emanating from the administration. “Report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program,” declared the headline on a Reuters story posted on Yahoo! News on Dec. 3. A Dec. 3 New York Times story ventured that “the conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.” The report was enough to vault the U.S. conflict with Iran into second place last week behind the 2008 Presidential campaign, which filled 19% of the newshole and was the No.1 story for the fifth time in the last six weeks. (Some of the campaign coverage included the candidates’ response to the new intelligence on Iran.) Much of the presidential coverage last week also involved skirmishing in advance of the Iowa caucuses as well as Mitt Romney’s high-stakes Dec. 6 speech designed to reassure voters about his Mormon religion. The third-biggest story of the week (at 7%) was the Dec. 5 shooting spree at the Omaha Nebraska mall that left nine people, including the teenage shooter, dead. The story was bigger on network TV (15%) than on cable (6%) thanks in part to a good deal of morning show coverage on the troubled life of the shooter, Robert Hawkins. The fourth-biggest story (at 6%) was the U.S. economy with the big news centering on the President’s plan to protect some homeowners from foreclosures. Next came domestic terrorism (5%), a good portion of which was consumed with the news that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations of terror suspects. PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) Last week’s intelligence report about Iran’s nuclear program comes as Iraq casualty counts drop and the public’s attention to the conflict there seems to be waning. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the percentage of those saying they followed news about Iraq very closely dropped from about 40% in 2006 and early 2007 to about 30% in the second half of 2007. And a recent story in Politico.com declared that “Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war.” Recent media coverage of the policy debate in Iraq is also down. This week’s 2% newshole figure is in keeping with a recent trend. Since Sept. 16, the week after General David Petraeus’ Iraq war report to Congress generated massive media attention, the policy debate has registered only at 3% of the newshole, putting it behind such stories as the California wildfires and unrest in Pakistan. Even as Iraq seemed to recede as a news story, some of the media began wondering whether Iran would become a target for U.S. military action. Last month, the news digest magazine, The Week, featured a cover headline “Next stop, Iran: Is the White House war talk a bluff?” with a cartoon of Vice-President Dick Cheney sitting astride a bomb. (That image was a play on a famous scene in the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove.”) “My God, I thought we were heading toward war in Iran and now it looks like we’re going to be able to avoid it…” declared MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews, referring to the new intelligence report, on his Dec. 4 show. His guest, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, said the White House had not ruled out military action against Iran, but in light of the new findings, the President “has no pretext…has no ability to do any kind of military action” unless Iran attacks the U.S. Still, the release of the report is not likely to resolve opposing views of how to handle the threat posed by Iran. On Bill O’Reilly’s Dec. 4 Fox News Channel show, former UN Ambassador John Bolton expressed serious doubts about the accuracy of the findings, warning that “my judgment is here that policy biases have crept into the so-called intelligence analysis.” Nor is it likely, at least for now, to change the words coming out of Washington and Tehran. On Dec. 5, ABC’s Good Morning America reported that, “Iran’s president is declaring victory this morning,” telling his citizens that “the U.S. report should deal a final blow to those who claim Iran has nuclear ambitions.” But the Dec. 5 New York Times account summed up the official U.S. response, repeating President Bush’s warning that, “Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” The President, the story added, “appeared to rule out any new diplomatic initiative with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: On the evenings of Thursday, December 6, and Friday, December 7, CNN aired two special programs in place of their regular programming. For both those evenings, we included Lou Dobbs Tonight and the Situation Room in our sample instead of the special programs.“The day after fight night,” declared George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s Nov. 29 newscast. “The Republican debate in St. Petersburg last night was a rumble.” The Associated Press report carried on Yahoo! News that day followed a similar if familiar theme: “Welcome to fight night.” The story quickly noted that in light of the debate fireworks, it was clear that the GOP contenders had replaced Hillary Clinton with each other as “their preferred punching bag.” While there’s evidence to suggest that campaign journalists gravitate toward covering the “horse race” aspects of an election, they also appear to have an affinity for the prize fight. And last week—one highlighted by a combative debate featuring an angry opening exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney—that metaphor proved to be a big one in a big week for campaign coverage dominated by Republicans. Overall, campaign coverage filled 19% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for the week of Nov. 25-30. The story led in all five media sectors and generated the most attention (29%) on cable. The week proved to be the second-biggest one for election coverage in 2007, trailing only the period of Nov. 11-16, when the subject accounted for 21% of the newshole. The Mideast gathering at Annapolis, the Bush administration’s most ambitious effort at Arab-Israeli peacemaking, was the second-biggest story of the week, at 8%. That was followed by the Nov. 30 hostage standoff, that ended peacefully, at Hillary Clinton’s Rochester New Hampshire campaign office (5%). The fourth-biggest story was the situation in Pakistan (5%) where last week President Pervez Musharraf stepped down as military chief. And news of the U.S. economy, which last week included hints of another interest rate cut, finished fifth at 4%. With this No. 1 showing, the 2008 campaign continued a run of intense coverage. The subject has registered as the No. 1 story in four of the five weeks from Oct. 28 through Nov. 30. It is noteworthy that the five-week interval began with an Oct. 30 Democratic debate at which Hillary Clinton’s challengers attacked her vigorously, inspiring more pugilistic metaphors in the media. (NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, for example, ventured that Clinton was still “acting tough” after “getting punched around” in that debate.) Even before the Republican debate in Florida last week, Giuliani and Romney—the former is leading national polls while the latter is doing better in Iowa and New Hampshire—had made news by criticizing each other in increasingly aggressive terms. With the caption reading “Gloves Off,” NBC’s Nov. 26 nightly newscast reported that the two candidates had “hit each other and hit each other hard” in recent days. After reporting that Giuliani had attacked former Massachusetts Governor Romney on the issue of crime in that state, NBC correspondent David Gregory added that “Romney, eager to exchange blows with Giuliani, fired back.” That dynamic carried over into the Nov. 28 debate, where the tone was set by a Romney-Giuliani exchange over immigration. Romney accused Giuliani of running a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants when he was mayor of New York. Giuliani responded by accusing Romney of operating a “sanctuary mansion”—a reference to the illegal workers who helped out around the former Massachusetts Governor’s home. The exchange proved irresistible for reporters. The headline on the front-page New York Times Nov. 29 debate analysis featured even more boxing lingo: “G.O.P. Rivals Exchange Jabs in Testy Debate.” One other message that came out of that debate—the continuing rise of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—was prominent in both the Times story and a Los Angeles Times story a day later. “The debate also reflected a news reality in the Republican race,” the New York Times said. “Mike Huckabee…played a central role, demonstrating how he had come from behind to show strength in several recent polls of Iowa caucus goers.” “On Thursday, Huckabee savored strong reviews for his performance the previous night in the CNN-YouTube debate at which the former Arkansas Governor delivered one-liners, played up his humble roots and proposed abolishing the IRS in favor of a national sales tax,” added the Los Angeles Time account. PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) Thanks in large part to the Florida debate, the Republicans were featured in about twice as many campaign stories as the Democrats last week. That bucks a trend that we have seen for a good portion of the year. When the coverage did turn to Democrats, one of the big stories was a looming battle of the surrogates. “It’s a political face-off the likes of which we’ve never seen,” said MSNBC’s Dan Abrams, indulging in what some veterans of politics might consider a bit of hyperbole on his Nov. 27 show. The big news? That former President Bill Clinton, out stumping on the campaign trail for Hillary, may soon cross paths in Iowa with Barack Obama’s marquee supporter, Oprah Winfrey. In keeping with the fighting mood of the moment, Abrams’ report set up this prospective Clinton-Winfrey showdown on the stump as a boxing match, complete with graphics of boxing gloves and yes, an actual recording of ring announcer Michael Buffer intoning “Let’s Get Ready to Rrrrrumble.” The former 42nd President made news of a more policy-oriented nature last week when he declared that he had “opposed Iraq from the beginning,” something a number of reports raised doubts about. CBS anchor Katie Couric said flatly, it “doesn’t square with his past statements.” All told, Bill Clinton himself was a subject in more than 25% of the campaign stories last week involving the Democrats. One other Clinton-related story grabbed the media’s attention last week, the six-hour Nov. 30 hostage standoff at Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign office that ended with no one harmed. (The candidate was not there.) The situation commanded the attention of the cable news networks who went live to the scene, training their cameras on the near-vacant streets around the campaign storefront and hitting up passersby for any possible details. A local man, reported to have been undergoing mental problems, was ultimately arrested. Although only a one-day event, the drama was the second-biggest cable story of the entire week. It filled 17% of the airtime. For that one day only, on Friday, the standoff consumed a whopping 79% of the cable newshole measured by the PEJ Index, which includes five hours of daily prime and daytime cable coverage. A ballplayer’s death strikes a nerve Another crime also gained notice last week. The shooting death of Washington Redskins 24-year-old defensive back Sean Taylor at his Miami home last week was the sixth-biggest story at 4%. The subject generated the most coverage on cable, where it was the No. 3 story at 6%. It can sometimes be difficult to parse out why one celebrity death generates more media attention than another. (By way of inexact comparison, the death of 73-year-old David Halberstam, an author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist killed in an April car accident, filled only 1% of the newshole when it happened.) Compared to other crimes involving sports figures this past year, the attention to Taylor’s death equaled the highest weekly total in the Michael Vick dog fighting case (4%), but was well behind the 13% of the newshole filled by O.J. Simpson’s September arrest in Las Vegas. There are a number of factors—the athlete’s youth and skill, the violent means of his death, the criminal investigation into the case, and Taylor’s own troubled past—that may have helped contribute to the extent of the coverage. And in Washington, where Taylor’s death was a huge story, that latter issue generated a controversy of its own. In her Dec. 2 column, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell addressed reader complaints that two sportswriters at the paper—Michael Wilbon and Leonard Shapiro—had been insensitive or worse by “quickly [bringing] up problematic parts of Taylor’s life.” “Never speak ill of the dead” wrote Howell in her opening sentence. “This maxim does not exist in the news business.” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ “Hillary Clinton announces she’s ready to return the fire,” Diane Sawyer proclaimed. The clips that followed showed Clinton declaring, “This pants suit, it’s asbestos tonight.” That same day, the CBS Evening News reported on a different aspect of the campaign—accusations of push-polling in New Hampshire. Allegedly, phone calls had been made to potential voters that first stated positive qualities of John McCain, but then asked voters if they knew Mitt Romney was Mormon. Both Romney and McCain condemned the apparent attacks on Romney’s religion. With six weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the campaign for the White House has become a story that no longer requires an overarching theme to dominate the news. Last week, a host of mini-scandals—to some perhaps, tempests in teapots and games of gotcha—were enough not only to make the campaign the No. 1 story last week, but to make it the biggest week for campaign coverage in 2007. At the same time, the state of emergency in Pakistan transformed itself in press coverage into a joust between two personalities. And O.J. 2.0 continued. By the numbers last week, the campaign overwhelmed everything else. The No. 1 story of the week, the race for president filled more than a fifth of the newshole (21%) as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. That was the highest weekly total for campaign coverage so far this year. Coverage of events in Pakistan dropped by more than half. The story fell from comprising 17% of the newshole in the week of November 4-9 to 7% last week. But that still made it the second-biggest story of the week, and Pakistan is the only country other than Iraq and Iran this year to remain a top-two story for two weeks running. (Iran made up 12% and then 13% of the newshole the weeks of March 25 and April 1.) The other top stories of the week were events on the ground in Iraq (5% of the space in print and online and time on television and radio of outlets measured in the Index), the Iraq policy debate at home (3%) and the baseball steroids scandal (3%), thanks largely to the Nov. 15 indictment of home run king Barry Bonds. It was also a week that highlighted the differences between different kinds of the media. In newspapers, Pakistan was the biggest story of the week (12% of the space in the front page stories in the papers examined), and at 13% of the newshole on online news sites, it rivaled the campaign (14%) in that sector. But on cable, Pakistan was hard to find. It was the No. 12 story of the week, making up just 1% of the airtime. On cable, O.J. Simpson was far bigger news, the No. 2 story of the week, filling 8% of the newshole. And the fate of Stacey Peterson, the policeman’s wife who has gone missing, was the No. 5 story. (By contrast, the Peterson case was not a front page story in any of the 13 newspapers examined.) PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) What stood out in the race for president last week, however, was the fact that no one story needs to emerge as preeminent now for the campaign to dominate press coverage. Last week it was a host of things. One was a mini-scandal involving Hillary Clinton that erupted after a Grinnell College student told her school paper that the question she asked at a Clinton rally was planted by a campaign staffer. The sophomore, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, told CNN she was encouraged by the staffer to ask about climate change and not another question she had prepared. The Clinton campaign later admitted to planting a question. That created an opportunity for both the press and other campaigns to attack Clinton’s credibility. On Monday, November 12, the Fox News Channel’s Shepard Smith reported, “More heat for Hillary Clinton, and it’s putting her on the defensive.” While Smith was introducing the story, a graphic that read “Hillary Hunt” appeared on the bottom-right corner of the screen. One reason the planted question story might have gained momentum is that it may feed an emerging narrative about Clinton’s campaign being controlling. Fox News reporter Major Garret, one of the first to pick up planted question story, said the brouhaha played into existing doubts raised by Barack Obama and John Edwards about Clinton’s honesty. “The fact that Hillary Clinton has now admitted at least in one case of putting a favorable question out to her reinforces, in the Edwards and the Obama camps’ mind, that particular frame,” he said. John McCain also found himself in the midst of a gotcha moment. On November 12, a woman at a South Carolina meet-and-greet asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” a reference to Clinton that apparently needed no elaboration. McCain caught off guard, chuckled and hesitated before saying, “May I give the translation?” When the audience laughter had died down, he added, “But that’s an excellent question.”
McCain did express his respect for Clinton,
but the fact that he did not offer a direct rebuke to the use of the B-word fed
the controversy. ABC’s World News Tonight aired a clip of an unidentified voter
stating, “He’s running to be the leader of our country. He
should have certainly used some leadership at that moment.” Even Republican strategist
Tucker Eskew was critical. “If there’s anything he could have done different,
it would have been to more quickly rebuke that choice of words and then answer
the question, which is ‘How are we going to beat her?’” And a number of outlets, particularly MSNBC, touched on the impact to Rudolph Giuliani, the GOP front runner in various national polls, of his former business colleague and friend, Bernard Kerik, being indicted for corruption and tax fraud charges. MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann emphasized the Giuliani-Kerik connection on November 15. Giuliani’s opponents were “sensing blood in the water,” said Olbermann, who followed with nasty quotes in the New York Observer from rival campaigns. An aide for John McCain was quoted as saying, “For Rudy to go out and say this is not worthy of discussion when it directly involves him and his decision making and in the case of the Department of Homeland Security, the security of our country – it’s disturbing that Rudy would think it’s not something he is going to have to address.” The news here was heavily speculative, but no less urgent. MSNBC correspondent David Shuster revealed: “I can report tonight that one of the rival campaigns is actively considering how and when to put the spotlight on this race on what they are referring to as Rudy Giuliani’s burning Kerik problem.” Pakistani Ping Pong In Pakistan, the storyline in the media shifted last week. A week before, the main theme was citizen protestors—including lawyers in suits—reacting to President Pervez Musharraf’s November 3 declaration of a state of emergency. The narrative last week morphed into a back-and-forth contest of tactical ping pong between Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The exchange began on Monday when opposition leader Bhutto said she was going to call for mass protests. Musharraf countered by placing her under house arrest. As Americans woke up Tuesday, they could see her next move. CBS’s Early Show, for instance, showed the barbed wire now around Bhutto’s house and reported that she was now calling for Musharraf’s resignation. “We are marching because it is time for General Musharraf to leave, simply leave. I think he’s out of touch, he’s out of step and its time for him to leave,” her voice was heard saying over a still photo. That evening Musharraf responded again, saying Bhutto “had no right” to tell him to step down, as the LA Times reported it. On NBC Nightly News, Pakistan’s President mounted his own charm offensive, inviting a group of reporters, including NBC’s Richard Engle, in for interviews. Bhutto would never be his prime minister now, he told Engle, dashing earlier hopes that the two might have formed a unity government. And Musharraf seemed to think that Bhutto was getting the better of the coverage. The western media like Bhutto because she is a woman and “and if she speaks very good English, very good, and if she happens also to be good looking, well then even better,” he told Engle. On November 15 Bhutto hit back again. She was now working to form a national unity government of her own, the account on Yahoo News explained, ready to replace Musharraf should he agree to step down. The next day, Musharraf announced he had formed a new cabinet, which he described as a step toward reinstating democracy. CNN reported, however, that all of the members were “hand picked and Musharraf friendly.” O.J. Returns And the week notably featured the return of O.J. Simpson to court. A preliminary hearing on kidnapping and armed robbery charges gave cable news the opportunity to revisit the ongoing saga that is the life of former the football star. Here O.J. outpaced every other subject except for the race for president. At times, some cable hosts even seemed self conscious about the time they were spending on the subject. In melodramatic tones, CNN’s Anderson Cooper described the trial on November 14 as “a bad joke,” and added that the scene was “tragedy repeating itself as bad comedy, but the charges are deadly serious, kidnapping and armed robbery.” Much of the coverage focused on the odd collection of characters who took the stand against O.J. As veteran Associated Press legal reporter Linda Deutsch said on Cooper’s program, “It’s amazing. I have never seen a preliminary hearing like this. It had so many witnesses, and every one of them had credibility problems.” The day before, on CNN’s Out in the Open, Rick Sanchez played a clip from the hearing at which one of witness was asked whether he was a pimp. Following the unusual piece of courtroom footage, Court TV correspondent Jami Floyd exclaimed, “These are the moments we live for in criminal law! This is a thing of beauty! This is why you become a criminal lawyer!” Apparently, Floyd was not the only one who was anticipating more from O.J. 2.0. As CNN correspondent Ted Rowlands warned viewers November 14, “If the pretrial hearing is any indication, buckle your seat belts.”
Paul Hitlin, Tricia Sartor, and Tom Rosenstiel of PEJ Note: Instead of CNN's coverage of the Democratic debate on the evening of Thursday, November 15, this week's sample included the that day's Situation Room instead. Also, due to technical errors, the ABC radio headlines from the morning of Monday, November 12, and CBS radio headlines from the evening of Friday, November 16, were not included in this week's sample.It’s not uncommon in the polarizing world of Talk Shows that one person is held as a hero by one side of the political spectrum and a villain by the other. What is odd, however, is to have talkers from both the political right and left cheering that person on— if for opposite reasons. So it was for Rep. Dennis Kucinich last week as he took to the House floor November 6 to introduce a measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney for having “manipulated the intelligence process” leading to the Iraq War. After the measure passed the House and moved to the Judiciary Committee, over moves by the Democratic leadership to kill it, the cheers from the left side of the talk dial could hardly be contained – along with some encouraging jeers from the right. “Hooray for Dennis Kucinich, the congressman from Ohio” said Ed Schultz at the beginning of his Wednesday, November 7 show. Later, after an interview with the congressman Schultz explained the reason for his excitement. “I have spent time with Dennis Kucinich. This is not a political stunt. ... This is how it is supposed to work. For some reason I have this feeling in my veins that democracy is slowly being restored in America.” As liberal talker Randi Rhodes watched “the Span” (as Rhodes dubbed C-SPAN), she was nearly beside herself as the votes for Kucinich’s proposal piled up – many from House Republicans. “But you want to hear what’s surprising, I’m watching it right now, more Republicans voted not to kill it so far than Democrats voted not to kill it. That’s pretty astounding to me. … I’m sure there are some Republicans who would like to debate it so they could make fools out of the Democrats, bring it on. I welcome that debate.” So, it seems, does Rush Limbaugh, who was watching from his perch on the right side of the radio dial. “The little guy [that would be Kucinich] goes to the floor of the House, wants to impeach Cheney for beating the war drums on a number of things and so Pelosi and Hoyer, they had to circle the wagons,” he said on his Wednesday show. “They had to move fast to stem the tide of embarrassment here. This is what happens when the left-wing kooks get hold of the party.” Outside the talk world, Kucinich’s move was barely a blip on the larger news-scape. The story did not come close to cracking the top-10 stories in PEJ’s overall News Coverage Index. But the story provided all the right elements for the talk universe, a divisive political issue with a well-known political figure and easy to define positions. The Kucinich impeachment effort ended up as the No. 2 story of the week according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for November 4 -9 . It made up 8% of the talk time. And it was even bigger in talk radio, where it was the top story with 20% of the total airtime. Leading the way at 28% of the newshole in talk last week was a variety of story lines associated with the 2008 campaign – everything from Rudolph Giuliani’s endorsement from Pat Robertson to the state of Hillary Clinton’s effort to the who’s the front-runner guessing game. Coming in third was talk about martial law in Pakistan at 6%. The immigration debate was fourth garnering 5% of the total talk time, with the global warming right behind it with just under 5%. PEJ’s Talk Show Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index.) The enthusiastic reaction to the Kucinich impeachment effort on liberal talk radio may show something of a disconnect between more left-wing liberal talkers and the Democratic Party establishment, including most of the candidates for president. On a Tuesday’s night’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews asked his guest Democratic presidential hopeful and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson if he was in favor of the impeachment move. No, Richardson told Matthews, adding that he would have voted against the measure “as a protest vote” because there were other things the Democrats should be working on. Beyond Rush Limbaugh’s show, which twice mentioned the vote as a means of making fun of the Democrats, other conservative talkers seemed less interested as well. But on the liberal side of the dial the impeachment issue had real momentum. Rhodes came back to the issue later in the week, and Schultz all but promised to keep the issue alive. During an interview on Schultz’s show on the subject, show Kucinich said: “Our work has just begun. I am working right now to put together a national town hall meeting so that the American people can be heard from in every corner of this country.” Schultz sounded eager to come along for the ride. “Can we broadcast that?” he asked the congressman. "I’ll just tell you right now we’d love to be a part of it.” For the hosts not digging into impeachment, however, there was a wide variety of topics in a particularly spread out week topically (with only one topic scoring in double-digits). Take, for instance, the fate of Bounty Hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman, star of the A&E reality show “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” The Chapman saga (his show was suspended when audio of him using the n-word in a phone conversation surfaced) was the second-largest talk story for the week of October 28, but didn’t carry the same weight on the talk dial this week as it fell to seventh place. Still, Sean Hannity did what he could to make sure Dog had his day for a second week. Hannity, co-host of Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes, not only scored the first interview with Chapman on Tuesday November 6, he came back to the topic the next night in an interview with pollster Frank Luntz. After playing clips from the previous night’s interview in which Dog got choked up as he apologized, Hannity suggested that the sincerity in the hard-core, mullet-coifed bounty-hunter’s appeal might offer the nation’s politicos a lesson. “Politicians can learn from this, can’t they?” the host said, turning to Luntz. “Why can’t Senator Clinton deliver that kind of apology, if she made a mistake on Iraq as she won’t say she did?” Luntz answered. “Boy, that would be impressive.” Dante Chinni of PEJ
4. Immigration - 5% 5. Global Warming - 5% 6. U.S. Domestic Terrorism - 4% 7. Dog the Bounty Hunter Scandal - 4% 8. U.S. Economy - 3% 9. Gas/Oil Prices - 3% 10. Iraq Policy Debate - 2% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. Pakistan - 17% 2. 2008 Campaign - 15%3. Events in Iraq - 3% 4. Gas/Oil Prices - 3% 5. O.J. Simpson - 3% 6. U.S. Economy - 3% 7. Product Recalls - 2% 8. Immigration - 2% 9. Global Warming - 2% 10. U.S. Domestic Terrorism - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. Last week, the crisis triggered by Musharraf’s Nov. 3 declaration of emergency and suspension of the constitution became a media mega-event with several crucial elements. One was the sheer drama of a strategically crucial nation teetering on the brink of chaos. The harsh crackdown by Musharraf, the U.S.’s shaky ally-by-default in the war on terror, also put frustrated American policymakers in a serious bind. And major upheaval in a country that is home to an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and reportedly Osama bin Laden as well, carries some chilling global security risks. All that helped make the crisis in Pakistan the top story last week in the news last week, filling 17% of the newshole, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index from Nov. 4-9. It was the leading story in the newspaper sector (17%), online (27%), and on network TV (21%), and it finished second in cable (11%) and third in radio (8%). Only the 2008 presidential race, which accounted for 15% of last week’s coverage, came anywhere close to competing with Pakistan for media attention. After that, the third-biggest story was the situation inside Iraq (3%), followed by rising gas and oil prices (3%) and another day in court for cable’s favorite celebrity defendant, O.J. Simpson (3%). But the trouble in Pakistan was more than just the leading story of the week. With the exception of Iraq, it registered the single-highest level of weekly coverage in 2007 of any global hotspot. (The next highest, 13% of the newshole, was generated when Iran released its 15 British captives in early April and when its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made his memorable September trip to Columbia University where he was dressed down by the school’s President, Lee Bollinger.) There may be a number of reasons to explain why few international crises manage to generate a major burst of U.S. media coverage. Critics have variously cited natural American isolationism, the cutting back on foreign bureaus, the failure of U.S. journalists to do international coverage of anything other than war, and more. Whatever the case, only one other international hotspot has led the weekly News Coverage Index in 2007, or even attracted double digit coverage—Iran. Not North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar, nor Israel and its immediate neighbors. Among these conflict-ridden locales, the most coverage in any week (9% from June 10-15) was devoted to the fighting between Fatah and Hamas that divided up the Palestinian territories. Two trouble spots that do tend to make some news fairly often are closely related to the the war on terror. During 2007, tensions between the U.S. and Iran (at 2% of the newshole) constituted the fifth-biggest overall story of the year. It became a top weekly story on three occasions, twice during the British hostage crisis and once during Ahmadinejad’s New York visit. In Afghanistan—where more than 100 U.S. troops died in 2007 making it the bloodiest year for American forces—the conflict, at just 1%, was not a top-10 story this year. The 2007 high point for coverage of the battle between the U.S. and a reconstituted Taliban was 4% from Feb. 25-March 2 when a bomb attack occurred near visiting Vice President Dick Cheney. At the time, a front-page New York Times story concluded that the strike near Cheney, “demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago.” PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) The social and political problems inside Pakistan also grabbed the media’s attention in July, during the violent battle for control over the “Red Mosque” between Islamic militants and Pakistani troops. The biggest week for coverage of the current instability in Pakistan had been Oct. 14-19 when former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s return from exile was greeted with attacks that killed over 100 people. That carnage helped make Pakistan the second-biggest story of that week, at 6%. But last week, the unrest in Pakistan became a story of another magnitude, attracting nearly three times the coverage of the Bhutto homecoming. Aside from chronicling the extent of the crackdown, a sizeable amount of coverage was devoted to the quandary facing U.S. officials who are upset with Musharraf’s decision even as they apparently see little choice but to support him. Musharraf’s emergency rule “poses a sharp setback for U.S. efforts to push Pakistan toward democracy, and it calls into question President Bush’s unstinting support for Musharraf despite the general’s growing unpopularity and inability to counter hard-line militants…” the Washington Post reported on Nov. 4. Two days later, Google News carried this dispatch from Time magazine noting how Musharraf’s decree had left American policy between a rock and a hard place: “Bush’s pro-democracy goals for the country seem as much in conflict as ever with the U.S.’s other goal— to stamp out the Taliban in Afghanistan and dismantle terrorist networks operating inside Pakistan.” If the choice between backing an ally in the war on terror or standing with Pakistan’s pro-democracy demonstrators was a tough one for the Administration, the potential consequences seemed easier for the media to describe. Some used apocalyptic terms—“chaos,” “nightmare scenario” and “a major new front in the war”—to describe the risks. Against the backdrop of a video of Osama bin Laden on horseback, CBS anchor Katie Couric warned on Nov. 5: “Pakistan has nuclear bombs and missiles, and some worry that potential chaos there could result in a nightmare scenario in which those weapons fall into the hands of terrorists.” A CNN report the next night on Anderson Cooper’s show (guest hosted by John King) noted how terrorists had recently re-established a stronger presence in Pakistan. “With the country in crisis,” CNN analyst Peter Bergen said, “the United States fears that a post-Musharraf Pakistan could become dominated by radicals, opening a major new front in the war on terror.” The administration’s worry, he added, is that “today’s Pakistan will become tomorrow’s pre-9/11 Afghanistan…where Al Qaeda can regroup to plot and prepare future large-scale attacks.” Thus was the last and most potent ingredient that helps explain why Pakistan was such big news. It is not what had happened, but what might happen, that animated much of the discussion. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: On Wednesday, November 7, CNN aired a special program on professional wrestling. Instead of including that program in this week's sample, we included that evening's episode of Anderson Cooper 360.But last week, the two syndicated hosts from opposite sides of the political spectrum seemed to find common ground on one hot topic—Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton. When the Clinton campaign complained that her opponents for the nomination had ganged up on her during a rough-and-tumble Oct. 30 debate in Philadelphia, the two hosts lit into the New York Senator. “How stupid,” declared Limbaugh on Nov. 2. “One day she wants to be thought of as strong like a man, as a member of the boys’ club. Then the other times, she’s just this victim…She’s blowing this big time…Mrs. Clinton playing the gender card.” “It appears to me Hillary Clinton is playing the role of a victim,” declared Schultz a day earlier. “I think it’s whining…I think it’s not a smart play…she’s trying to change the subject.” It was that kind of week for Hillary Clinton. The 2008 Presidential campaign was the dominant topic on the radio and cable talk shows last week, filling 42% of the airtime, as measured by PEJ’s Talk Show Index for Oct. 28-Nov. 2. That was the single biggest week for the campaign in the 2007 talk universe—and the conversation was virtually all Clinton all the time. The former First Lady was a significant subject in about 75% of the talk segments in last week’s Index. And many of them were not flattering or friendly. After the race for the White House, there was a huge drop off to the second-biggest topic (at 6%). That was the furor over revelations that bounty hunter/reality TV star Duane “Dog” Chapman (he of the spectacular mullet hair style) repeatedly used the “N-word” racial slur in a telephone conversation with his son. That was followed by the confirmation process for Attorney General Nominee Michael Mukasey (5%), immigration issues (5%) and the Iraq policy debate (4%). PEJ’s Talk Show Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index.) Hillary Clinton’s history with the talk hosts goes back more than a decade to when she lived in the White House and presided over an unsuccessful attempt to remake the nation’s health care system. (Conservative talk radio’s ascendancy coincided to a significant extent with Bill Clinton’s 1992 election as President.) Ever since Clinton’s January announcement that she intended to follow in her husband’s footsteps, she has been a prime subject on talk radio and a prime target of conservative talkers. PEJ’s recent report on election coverage in the first five months of 2007 found that Clinton generated almost three times as many segments on conservative talk radio as any other candidate. And 86% of those segments about her were negative in tone. But she didn’t fare well on the liberal talk radio either, where she was a far less frequent topic of discussion, but where negative segments about her outnumbered positive ones by two-to-one. Cable news has also been fascinated by the Clinton candidacy. And next to radio, it is the media sector that devoted the highest percentage of coverage (17.5%) to her in the early phases of the campaign, according to the PEJ election study. The triggering event for last week’s outpouring of Hillary hammering was the Oct. 30 debate at which she was aggressively attacked by her rivals and turned in a performance that, according to many media post-mortems, left something to be desired. (This week, in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Clinton acknowledged as much, saying “I wasn’t at my best the other night.”) That was certainly an understatement as far as many of the talk hosts were concerned. One line of criticism was the post-debate whining angle seized on by both Limbaugh and Schultz. Then there were the poor reviews of her actual debate performance. “Last night’s debate in Philadelphia may soon become known as the great Hillary debacle,” declared Sean Hannity, the conservative half of the “Hannity & Colmes” Fox News Channel team. Next came focus group guru Frank Luntz, who monitored the response of 29 Democratic voters to the candidates during the debate and concluded that “what we saw last night was for the first time, this Hillary presidential train seems to have been slightly derailed.” The debate moment that got the attention of a number of commentators was Clinton’s equivocal response when asked whether she supported New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to give drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. “I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do” it, she declared. Providing his debate post-mortem on Tucker Carlson’s Oct. 31 MSNBC show (guest hosted by David Shuster), Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe said some of Clinton’s answers “seemed to encapsulate a narrative that has been out there, but has not been seized on for most of this campaign, which is about truthfulness, about being clear, about answering questions.” “Is Hillary being too Clintonian?” he asked. The immigration issue is CNN host Lou Dobb’s favorite topic by far, so he was quick to attack Clinton on his Oct. 31 program. “Hillary says she is for Spitzer’s proposal—and against it,” Dobbs declared, with more than a hint of incredulity. “What in the world is this Democratic front runner trying to do?” In the same segment, CNN’s senior political analyst William Schneider reported on a poll in which 76% of Americans say they oppose drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants. He also noted that at the debate, Clinton’s “Democratic rivals were quick to pounce—the charge—evasiveness.” Even the distraction of Halloween brought no respite for Clinton. “Hillary Clinton leads in yet another poll,” reported MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews on his Oct. 29 program. As it turns out, 37% of the respondents to an Associated Press survey said that of all the major presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton would make the scariest Halloween costume. Rudy Giuliani was a distant second at 14%. “Two-thirds of Republicans picked Hillary Clinton as the spookiest costume,” said Matthews matter of factly, “and even a fifth of the Democrats said that.”
Whether the subject was debate evasiveness
or Halloween spookiness, Hillary Clinton had a week in the talk show universe
that her campaign would surely like to forget. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
4. Immigration - 5% 5. Iraq Policy Debate - 4% 6. U.S. Economy - 3% 7. Iran - 3% 8. Global Warming - 2% 9. U.S. Domestic Terrorism - 2% 10. Product Recalls - 2% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. 2008 Campaign - 17% 2. Events in Iraq - 6%3. California Wildfires - 4% 4. Tropical Storm Noel - 4% 5. U.S. Economy - 4% 6. Michael Mukasey as Attorney General Nominee - 4% 7. North Carolina Beach House Fire - 2% 8. Immigration - 2% 9. Iraq Policy Debate - 2% 10. Iran - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. Calling it “strikingly different in tone” from the previous ones, The New York Times reported that Clinton came under “withering attack” on everything from her “candor” to “electability.” Two days after the debate, NBC’s “Today” show showed footage of Clinton brandishing the red boxing gloves she received at the AFSCME union endorsement while correspondent Andrea Mitchell worked over the pugilistic metaphors. “After getting punched around in Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton is still acting tough.” Less noticed, however, the news media last week were also busy sharpening some other “master narratives” about several candidates. These master narratives are broader and thematic “storylines” about different contenders that often reflect and reinforce public perceptions and can powerfully shape press coverage. In a sense, the battle for exposure in a campaign is often a battle to see which master narrative the press leans toward about your candidate. Is Hillary Clinton hard and calculating, or is she tough and sophisticated? Is Rudy Giuliani too liberal for the GOP, or redefining it? Last week, two of these narratives—one involving Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama and another concerning former Arkansas Republican Governor Mike Huckabee—showed signs of becoming significantly more fleshed out in the coverage of the campaign. With Obama, the issue—boiled down to basics—is whether he is too mellow and mild mannered for the rugged nature of presidential politics. An Oct. 29 Los Angeles Times story that puzzled over why the charismatic Senator was not faring better quoted a political consultant chalking it up his “gentle style.” An anecdote in the story noted that Obama generated only mixed results in face-to-face meetings with Iowa voters, partly because of his “mild…rhetoric.” Other stories last week went even further, questioning his toughness. In the case of Huckabee, there were signs of a new master narrative as well—that in the absence of an heir to Ronald Reagan, his conservative values and affable manner are turning him into a more viable contender. An Oct 29 National Public Radio report—noting that Huckabee had enjoyed a big jump in online fundraising and a bump in some Iowa polls—interviewed a voter who originally passed over Huckabee because of doubts about his electability, but then decided “what really matters is the person.” The story also showcased Huckabee’s skills as a bass guitar player. In front of a crowd of Iowa GOP revelers, his band played a song appropriate for a political campaign, the 1960 pop hit—later covered by the Beatles—titled “Money (That’s What I Want).” The Philadelphia debate, along with the emerging Obama and Huckabee story lines, helped make the presidential campaign the dominant story last week, filling 17% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for Oct. 28-Nov. 2. It was the top story in the newspaper sector (11%) and network TV (13%) and racked up even bigger number in the two sectors—cable TV (27%) and radio (28%)—where the talk hosts regularly hold forth on the election. Thanks in part to the Philadelphia face off, the week was a big one for Democrats, with their candidates generating about five times as many stories as the Republican hopefuls. After the campaign, the second-biggest story last week was the situation inside Iraq, at 6%, followed by the western wildfires at 4%, tropical storm Noel at 4%, and the U.S. economy at 4%. During the week of Oct. 21-26, the raging California wildfires utterly dominated the news, accounting for 38% of the coverage. With the blazes coming under control last week, coverage of the story fell by 34 percentage points. PEJ’s News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See List of Outlets.) It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) In the early phase of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was the recipient of largely flattering coverage in the mainstream media. (A new PEJ study on election coverage from January through May 2007 found that he generated more positive coverage than any other announced major candidate, with upbeat stories outnumbering the negative ones by about three to one.) His early fundraising prowess and clear emergence as the leading challenger to Clinton in the polls seemed to fuel the good press. But as the campaign has dragged on, Clinton’s ability to stretch her lead in the polls and Obama’s failure to translate his obvious talents into more strategic success has started raising questions in the media about the T-word—toughness. One night before the Philadelphia debate, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson opened his show by wondering about that very issue. “Barack Obama swears he’s gonna get tough with Hillary Clinton,” said Carlson. “But the thing about real tough guys—they don’t talk all that much about being tough. They just do it. Is Obama for real?” The next night, in an NBC nightly news report previewing the debate, anchor Brian Williams noted Obama’s promise “to be tougher in the campaign against frontrunner Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.” And the subsequent story featured Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Ed Rendell’s blunt warning that Obama “needs a performance where the media…are saying ‘he showed some strength, he made some points, he looked liked a leader.’ Right now, the buzz from the debates is…he’s not ready for prime time.” On the GOP side, Huckabee, the little-known pastor and former Arkansas chief executive, was part of a group of presumed Republican long shots (such as Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul) virtually ignored by the media in the early part of the campaign. But his star began to rise when he finished a fairly strong second to Mitt Romney in the August Iowa straw poll, an event journalists are often quick to dismiss even while it does become a benchmark that influences their coverage. Upward movement in recent Iowa polls and an increased profile have generated attention from a political press re-evaluating its original decision to marginalize him. Previewing his interview with Huckabee on the Oct. 30 edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos asked the question of the moment: “Could he be on the verge of becoming a real contender?” On the previous night, MSNBC’s Carlson acknowledged that Huckabee’s “laid back style and easy laugh are winning over crowds.” That however, led into a discussion with the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund about how solid Huckabee’s conservative credentials are. Acknowledging that he is “a very engaging fellow [and] a terrific campaigner,” Fund said Huckabee’s Arkansas record “is not the record of a fiscal conservative.” In an odd way, the questioning of Huckabee’s conservative bona fides lends credibility to his campaign since that issue has already repeatedly arisen with the four top Republican contenders—Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson.
In the “Good Morning America” story on his strengthening candidacy, Huckabee himself posited a theory for why he’s suddenly finding his record as governor under much closer scrutiny. With his opponents and critics now realizing that “this guy’s alive,” they’ve decided “let’s go get him.” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: This week's sample did not include the presidential debate that MSNBC aired on Tuesday, October 30, but included an episode of Tucker instead. Also, CNN aired special programs on the evenings of October 31 and November 1. Other CNN shows were substituted for those evenings rather than the normal rotation.While discussing President Bush’s Oct. 25 trip to the scene of the California blazes, Rhodes admonished him not to say anything “stupid.” She then replayed the 2005 audio clip in which the President praised FEMA director Michael Brown’s response to Hurricane Katrina with the now infamous words, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” The embattled Brown, widely blamed for some of the post-Katrina chaos, resigned 10 days later. On the other side of the talk dial, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh linked the fires that destroyed about 2,000 homes to elements of the environmental movement. He accused those who connected the fires and global warming of “a blatant attempt to politicize” the disaster. Then he laid blame on the “whacko environmentalists who will not let anybody go in and clear out the dead wood.” “This,” he added, “is the height of irresponsibility.” In all, the wildfires in Southern California were the dominant story on the cable and radio talk shows last week, just as they were in the broader News Coverage Index of all media. The blazes across hundreds of thousands of acres of Southern California hillsides accounted for 36% of the airtime, as measured by PEJ’s Talk Show Index for Oct. 21-26. That made it the fifth-biggest talk topic of the year. And it easily trumped the week’s other major talk stories—the Presidential race (14%), the Iraq policy debate (9%), events inside Iraq (4%) and the debate over immigration policy, at 4%. It is unusual for talk hosts to spend a lot of time discussing natural disasters, since it’s generally difficult to foment debate and disagreement over violent or extreme acts of nature. But one aspect of the wildfires story, just as it had for the more reportorial elements of the media culture, transformed it into more than simply a tragedy to be lamented. The shadow of Hurricane Katrina—and more notably, the widely criticized government response to the Gulf Coast flooding—enveloped the wildfires, providing a socio-political narrative to the coverage. In the general news coverage, this led to a number of stories comparing, for example, conditions for the fire evacuees at San Diego’s Qualcomm stadium with the hardships for Katrina refugees inside the New Orleans Superdome. (They were dissimilar.) In parts of the talk sector, however, the politicization of the wildfires was more blatant—and more likely to jump to conclusions about blame of all sorts. Some liberals tried to conjure up embarrassing comparisons with the Bush administration’s Katrina-related problems, sometimes making FEMA the fall guy. Conversely, some conservatives assailed liberals for trying to make political hay out of the tragedy while focusing some of their ire, as Limbaugh did, on environmentalists. While the targets varied, the finger pointing could have put an eye out. PEJ’s Talk Show Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index.) It is worth noting that the talkers’ response to the wildfires was not monolithic. Some of the hosts who devoted major coverage to the subject—CNN’s Lou Dobbs and the Fox News Channel team of Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes—spent considerable time discussing news developments related to the fires. It was left to others, such as MSNBC’s liberal Keith Olbermann and the Fox News Channel’s right-tilting Bill O’Reilly, to hammer away at the more ideological angles to the story. And that was certainly the case with radio hosts on both sides of the political spectrum. “Politics and the California fire” was the headline on O’Reilly’s segment on Oct. 24. “The usual political loons are trying to define the fire in an ideological way,” he declared. O’Reilly took issue with several Democratic politicians, including California Senator Barbara Boxer, who linked the war in Iraq with insufficient resources for the firefighting efforts. The Pentagon, O’Reilly declared, had concluded that the war effort had “no negative effect” on the California crisis, adding that “about 17,000 National Guard [troops] are available, right now, but not needed.” On his syndicated radio show, Sean Hannity also went after the environmentalists, citing a Congressional study that he said accused them of blocking the “thinning of forests to prevent wildfires.” “You can’t cut down a tree, you can’t thin it because you may hurt some obscure species that will offend these environmental extremist groups,” Hannity added disapprovingly. On his Oct. 26 cable show, Olbermann seized on an incident that embarrassed the federal government. That was FEMA’s Oct. 23 press conference at which agency staffers posed as reporters and asked less-than-challenging questions of FEMA deputy director Harvey Johnson. The Fox News Channel and MSNBC televised the event. “FEMA eliminates the middle man and passes on the propaganda savings to you,” declared a dismissive Olbermann. “FEMA today said not a single journalist attended the news conference, the press conference, the de-press conference.” And Michael Savage, the conservative contrarian radio talker had his own villain in all this, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though he was generally lauded for his aggressive response to the disaster. (“Fires Boost Schwarzenegger’s Image” was the headline on one AP story.)
Savage disagreed. “Strudel-negger (an apparent reference to
the governor’s Austrian background) is as good at this as the governor of Louisiana was in
Katrina,” he asserted. “What a flop he is. Don’t tell me the muscleman did a
good job. He stank.”
4. Events in Iraq - 4% 5. Immigration - 4% 6. Iran - 3% 7. Health Care - 3% 8. Valerie Wilson/CIA Leak - 3% 9. Afghanistan - 1% 10. Alberto Gonzales - 1% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. California Wildfires - 38% 2. 2008 Campaign - 9%3. Events in Iraq - 7% 4. Iran - 3% 5. Iraq Policy Debate - 3% 6. Health Care - 2% 7. Baseball World Series - 2% 8. Immigration - 2% 9. U.S. Domestic Terrorism - 2% 10. U.S. Economy - 1% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. Note: Due to technical errors, this week's sample does not include some programming from CNN and MSNBC that aired on Wednesday, October 24, and Thursday, October 25. In addition, CNN aired two special programs the evening of Tuesday, October 23, and those shows were not included either.
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