News IndexThe first reports became public at roughly 10 a.m. Monday August 6. An underground shaft at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Huntington, Utah had collapsed early that morning, trapping six miners 1,500 feet below ground. By afternoon, all three cable news channels were live with continuing reports and special graphics signaling breaking news. Shortly before 2:30 p.m., over a “Fox Alert” logo, anchor Jane Skinner reported: “We’re continuing to watch a story out of Utah – six coal miners are trapped and a rescue effort is well underway there. A coal mine caved-in. There was an early morning earthquake in this area, so the question is did that earthquake cause this cave-in?” On MSNBC, “coal mining expert” Jeff Goodell was explaining that the rescue effort was going to be “a slow and methodical operation….These hours right now are the most critical…” At the dinner hour, all the three broadcast networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—led with the story. “The earth just seemed to swallow up six miners today,” ABC’s Charles Gibson began his newscast. “There was a Utah coal mine cave-in so powerful it registered on the Richter scale.” That evening, cable talk focused in. By the end of the week, the mine collapse had emerged as a major news story that had two familiar narrative elements. One, tracking the rescue efforts, traced an arc of dimming optimism. The other, over responsibility, was a struggle among the players in the drama to shape the media’s storyline. In this case, that battle was a subtext to the rescue effort: who or what was to blame for the collapse. Overall, the mine collapse filled 13% of the newshole in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s weekly News Coverage Index from Sunday August 5 through Friday August 10. Even with all that, it was still the second-biggest story of the week. The top story, once again, was the presidential campaign still many months away. The race for the White House made up 16% of PEJ’s News Index, which measures the space in newspapers and online sites, and airtime on TV and radio taken up by each story. The week in the campaign was driven by multiple events. There were three debates along with the run up to the Republican Iowa straw polls, one of the signature events of the early campaign season. Together, they were enough to make this the biggest week of the campaign so far this year in terms of press coverage. By comparison, while the plight of the trapped miners was a major story, it did not rise to the level of a dominant one. It received just slightly more than half the coverage in PEJ’s Index that the Minnesota bridge collapse did the week before, which emerged as one of the biggest stories of the year. A few other stories also vied for attention last week as well. The Minneapolis Bridge collapse continued to be a running story for the second week (6%), as rescue efforts for victims’ bodies continued and more information was uncovered about potential structural faults in the design of the bridge. That made it the third-biggest story of the week. Events on the ground in Iraq had a relatively quiet week (5% of the newshole). The economy and falling stock prices each filled 3% of the newshole, which means that together they would have only ranked fourth. The achievement and controversy surrounding San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record also filled 3%. PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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 or not covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.)
The confusion about the cause of the mine accident added to the complexity of the story. At 2 a.m. Mountain Time on Monday, the University of Utah seismic stations reported an earthquake of 3.9-magnitude. About an hour later, the collapse at the mine was reported to safety regulators by the company, Murray Energy Corporation. By the afternoon, University of Utah researchers believed that the mine collapse caused the seismic activity, not the other way around. This became a point of contention, especially for the mine’s owner, Bob Murray, who would emerge as major actor in the story and who maintained throughout that the earthquake caused the incident. By Monday night, the networks focused some of their reporting on the process called “retreat mining,” a controversial method by which the roof is held up by pillars of coal, which are then pulled out as miners retreat. Tony Oppegard, a former mine safety official for Kentucky and the federal government, told the Associated Press that evening, this is "the most dangerous type of mining there is." In the battle over framing the story, mine owner Murray would argue that the term “retreat mining” itself was an inflammatory one coined by union organizers and told reporters it should be “taken out of your vocabulary.” As Americans woke up Tuesday, the three network morning shows were focused on the families and the surrounding communities. A piece on NBC’s Today Show featured Michelle Anderson, a coal miner’s daughter, in tears: “We pray all day long. We pray that they find them. And find them alive.” Added coal miner Cody Potter: “I tell you all the community comes real close, comes back together and they stick together.” By now, mine owner Murray was a major voice in many press accounts. Media savvy and well spoken, he argued that only an earthquake could account for the collapse. During a press conference Tuesday afternoon, replayed often on cable, Murray pointed at a blueprint map of the mine and showed where the miners were trapped (1,500 feet below ground), and where the U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake’s center was (5 miles below ground). There is no way, Murray contended, that the mine collapse could have caused something so far below it. As the week went on, Murray became the primary spokesman for the progress of the rescue effort, which gave more prominence to his point of view about causes. That put him in opposition to a series of geological experts who were less visible. Walter Arabasz, the director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, appeared Tuesday evening on Anderson Cooper 360 to dispute Murray’s claims. Kim McCarter, chair of the University of Utah mining department, followed that interview and contended that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the mine collapse caused the disturbance. By Wednesday, the timetable for the rescue became the story. There were reports that the drilling could take two or more days to reach the miners. On CNN’s Situation Room, guest host Carol Costello interviewed Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. and noted, “You don’t even know if that hole (being drilled) is going to be in the right place.” Huntsman, Jr. agreed and added that due to the “unpredictabilites of Mother Nature” the rescuers had lost much of the progress they had made the previous days in drilling into the mine. By Thursday, the press began to have more questions about safety violations and this particular mine. Meredith Vieira of the Today show asked Murray, “Since January of 2004 it’s been cited 325 times by the federal government for violations, more than 100 of those considered potential dangers to the miners…How can you be so sure that this accident isn’t the result of a problem with the mine itself?” He had only owned the mine for about a year, Murray answered, and he said his track record in owning mines for more than 19 years is admirable. The media now also had more information about the miners themselves and profiles of the trapped men and their families were becoming a staple. Fox News Live listed the names of the trapped men including Don Erickson who is called a “serious-minded perfectionist” by his friends and Brandon Phillips who had lost an uncle in a mine fire 20 years ago. Mid-day Friday, rescuers managed to bore a 2.5 inch drill into the cavity where it was believed the miners might be. A microphone was dropped into where the miners were expected but no sounds were heard. Then came reports of the oxygen levels. In the mine cavity where the drill penetrated, the oxygen level averaged 7.5 percent, not enough to sustain life for very long. But the word came from Richard Stickler, head of the Mine and Safety Administration, that oxygen levels could vary widely in mines, and by evening a second larger drill was expected to reach the miners soon. By Sunday, August 12, rescuers managed to get a camera into the space, but there were no signs of people. In the coverage, hopes were clearly fading. The New York Times reported that “when rescue workers, seeking silence, turned off all their machines and tapped three times on a pipe leading to the mine space, they waited in vain for a response from below.” Michael Glasson, a geologist for the mine company, described the moment as “heartbreaking,” but the rescuers would continue on their search until they knew the fate of the miners for certain.
Paul Hitlin, Mahvish Khan and Tom Rosenstiel of PEJ
It was late afternoon on Friday Aug.3—less than 48 hours after the I-35W Bridge had collapsed into the Mississippi River—and CNN’s “Situation Room” was in full battle mode. Captions like “Happening Now” and “Breaking News Alert” filled the screen with a sense of urgency. At the site of the Minneapolis catastrophe, correspondent Brian Todd described a city “cut in half” as recovery workers go about their “slow” and “very treacherous” work. “Divers carry out the grim tasks of searching for bodies and sunken cars in the Mississippi River,” he reported. Also on scene, correspondent Mary Snow relayed the story of Good Samaritan/hero Greg Bernstein, who helped tend to several severely injured victims immediately after the accident. “I could see the guy…who was crushed,” Bernstein recalled. “A truck landed on top of his car…And he was yelling, he was saying he couldn’t breathe.” By now, three days into the event, the media was taking the narrative of the bridge collapse in several directions. The death and trauma in Minnesota were interwoven with the broader issue of U.S. infrastructure safety. Anchor Wolf Blitzer announced that as of last December, there were 760 bridges in the U.S. with a design similar to the one in Minneapolis. “Two hundred and sixty-four of them,” he intoned, “are considered structurally deficient.” Blitzer later switched to a reporter at a television station in Tequesta, Florida. The bridge in that community has been labeled structurally deficient and a cracked center span recently had to be replaced. Since the Minnesota disaster, the reporter stated, citizens were “calling the mayor’s office…They are concerned about the safety of the Tequesta Bridge here…The mayor assures people here there’s no need to panic.” Meanwhile, Jack Cafferty, the “Situation Room’s” designated skeptical curmudgeon, came up with the day’s email question for CNN viewers. “How confident are you if officials say that a bridge is in very little danger of collapsing?” Over at the Fox News Channel, afternoon business anchor Neil Cavuto was also focusing on the bridge tragedy. “I guess what hits most folks is the randomness of it all,” he observed. “A bridge, taken routinely by thousands every day, becomes a death trap for a few, on one day — just like that.” Sad funereal music accompanied a video collage of scenes of injury, damage and rescue at the bridge. The rush-hour collapse Aug. 1 of the I-35W Bridge—which thus far has claimed five lives and left eight others missing— shoved most other news to second status last week. According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for July 29-Aug. 3, the bridge disaster filled 25% of the newshole of TV and radio airtime and print and online space, making by far the biggest story of the week. It was the top story in every sector of the media and was a dominant TV news story, accounting for 29% of last week’s broadcast network coverage. That was particularly true on cable, where it filled 43% of the airtime. That level of attention made the bridge collapse the fourth-biggest event of 2007. The top story was the Virginia Tech shooting rampage, which filled 51% of the newshole for the week of April 15-20. The second biggest story was the Iraq policy debate, which accounted for 34% of all coverage in the week of Jan 7-12 when President Bush announced his “surge” strategy. The third-biggest story was the firing of talk host Don Imus which filled 26% of the newshole in the week of April 8-13. Yet those numbers probably undercount the intensity of the coverage, as the week only includes three days of news about the bridge collapse—Aug. 1 through Aug 3. In that more compressed time frame, the story accounted for 41% of the overall news coverage, consuming 48% of the network news airtime and 69% of the cable newshole. No other subject came close last week. The 2008 presidential campaign was the second-biggest story at 8%, followed by the events inside Iraq (5%), the Iraq policy debate (3%) and Rupert Murdoch’s controversial $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones, and its flagship paper, The Wall Street Journal (3%). The health scare that struck Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (3%) was the sixth story. The continued probe into beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was seventh-biggest, also at 2%. With the probable final death toll now expected to be about dozen lives, the Minnesota disaster will not come close to matching the cost or casualty count of an event like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. Yet it seemed to strike a powerful chord with both media and the public. Part of that may well have been the images of cars tossed around like toys. Part of it may have been the sense that it could have happened to anyone anywhere—the “there but by the grace of God” sentiment uttered by Cavuto. Another factor is the fact that it may suggest a broader issue, the safety of U.S. road infrastructure. Still another element to the story was the mystery of whether lives might still be saved, always a powerful force in news. The story may also have mined a deeper concern embedded in the national psyche—and one touched on in some of the coverage—the sense that America’s know-how, confidence, and invincibility are eroding in this era of 9/11 and Katrina. As John McQuaid wrote in a Washington Post column headlined “The Can’t Do Nation,” the U.S. “seems to have become the superpower that can’t tie its own shoelaces….Its bridges shouldn’t fall down.” So many subtexts can turn an event into a national dialogue. PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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.) Trouble for Thompson and Obama As for the other news last week, the 2008 Presidential campaign was the second-biggest story in the newspaper (8%), cable (9%) and radio sectors (11%). Some of that coverage concerned the problems besetting two of the hotter candidates in the race—Senator Barack Obama on the Democratic side and former Senator Fred Thompson on the GOP side. Thompson, the politician/actor who has not yet officially entered the race, has performed well in the polls, reflecting perhaps dissatisfaction with the existing GOP field, the power of celebrity or perhaps the perennial curiosity about greener pastures. Yet there were already signs of a turn in the media narrative about Thompson last week. Reflecting on some recent staff turmoil and Thompson’s failure to do as well as expected in recent fundraising, NBC’s Tim Russert had some cautionary words on the Aug. 1 “Today” show. “He has to get in this race and start actually campaigning and showing that he’s a real rough and tumble candidate,” Russert ventured, “or people are not going to take the campaign as seriously as people had thought.” A similar shift in narrative, or at least continuing subplot of doubt, was present in the coverage of Barack Obama last week. After foreign policy pronouncements that put him squarely in the dovish camp of his party, Obama generated controversy by turning hawkish and raising the specter of sending U.S. troops to Pakistan if that nation does not get more aggressive about fighting extremists. An Aug. 2 Washington Post story pointedly noted that Obama’s “muscular speech appeared aimed at inoculating him from criticism that he lacks the toughness to lead the country in a post-9/11 world…” It also included a series of critical reactions from his Democratic rivals, such as Senator Joseph Biden’s warning that “the last thing you want to do is telegraph to the folks in Pakistan that we are about to violate their sovereignty.” One question is whether such jousting so early in the campaign season makes much difference with voters. Murdoch gets the Journal Then there was the long anticipated resolution of the ownership of the nation’s leading financial newspaper. After months of speculation and reams of commentary (much of it critical), Rupert Murdoch’s audacious $5 billion bid landed him the Wall Street Journal, one of the most prestigious daily newspapers in the country. (The story also accounted for 5% of the newspaper coverage, the most of any sector.) The account in the Aug. 1 New York Times—which now may face more direct competition from a Murdoch-owned Journal—stated that “combined with the planned beginning of the Fox business news channel in October, the purchase of Dow Jones makes Mr. Murdoch the most formidable figure in business news coverage in this country, perhaps worldwide.” It also quoted a reporter at the Journal who said of Murdoch’s impending ownership: “It’s sad…We held a wake. We stood around a pile of Journals and drank whiskey.” Death of a Director More indisputably sad was the passing of Ingmar Bergman, the 89-year-old Swedish filmmaker. His death was #9 on the Index last week, filling 2% of the newshole. “Cinema’s brooding auteur of the psyche” read the headline on the Los Angeles Times’s front-page obit/appreciation. Only in the newspaper sector, where it was the fourth-biggest story at 5%, did Bergman’s passing make the top-10 story roster. And it attracted virtually no coverage at all on cable. There, despite the most time of any sector to fill with news, the tendency remains a focus on fewer stories, not more. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Much of the media narrative that emerged from the July 23 CNN/YouTube debate was about the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama disagreement over whether a President should meet with hostile foreign leaders. And when that argument continued throughout the week, some analysts viewed it as one of the early defining moments of the Democratic presidential battle. But in the world of talk last week, both in cable and radio, it was the CNN/YouTube debate itself—with its unusual format of citizen-produced video questions—that became a big part of the story. The reviews were mixed. On his July 24 program, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh thought “a lot of these questioners were idiots.” He especially didn’t like the citizen who asked each candidate to say something they liked and disliked about the person next to them. “This is silly,” Limbaugh observed. “This is right out of the Miss American pageant.” On the same day, liberal radio talker Ed Schultz waxed enthusiastic about the format. “Did you watch the YouTube debate last night?” he asked listeners. “I thought [CNN moderator] Anderson Cooper did a great job…You have to admit the questions were different and the responses were somewhat different.” The July 23 edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” program featured a focus group assembled by controversial pollster Frank Luntz reacting to the debate. By a substantial margin, they thought Obama had outperformed Clinton, using words like “charismatic” and “sincere” to describe the Illinois Senator. But the verdict seemed even more unified when Luntz asked how many people liked the debate. Virtually every hand shot up. “They want real people talking on the real issues,” Luntz concluded. With that “real people” debate accounting for almost 50% of the segments, the presidential campaign was the leading cable and radio talk subject last week, filling 18% of the airtime according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for July 22-27. The next biggest story in the Talk universe last week was the growing confrontation between Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and those in the Democratic-led Congress who believe he has been playing fast and loose with the truth, which made up 9% of the talk time. (The presidential campaign and the Gonzales crisis also finished #1 and #2 last week in the general news Index.) A brutal crime that attracted major news coverage last week was also among the top stories on the talk shows. The home invasion that took three lives in quiet Cheshire Connecticut was the third-biggest talk topic (at 6%). That was followed by the issue of borders and immigration (fourth-biggest at 6%) that festers in the aftermath of the recent defeat of the immigration bill. The top-five story roster was rounded out by concerns about domestic terrorism (5%), driven in part by a Transportation Security Administration report about possible “dry runs” for attacks that entailed bringing suspicious objects into airports. The talk culture was also more fixated than the news media generally on two stories that generated considerable buzz in the sports and celebrity worlds. The fallout from Atlanta Falcon quarterback Michael Vick’s dogfighting arrest was the eighth-biggest story at 3%. And the drug and alcohol bust of one of Hollywood’s girls gone wild, 21-year-old Lindsay Lohan, was ninth at 3%. 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 horrific slaying of a Connecticut mother and her two daughters is the kind of event that triggers coverage not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it reinforces the basic fear that no one is really safe from crime. And while the news coverage was gruesome enough, the emotions associated with a case like this had even freer rein in the talk realm. Two of those hosts, MSNBC’s Dan Abrams and talk radio’s Michael Savage, did most of the talking. Calling the two suspects in the Connecticut case, “the worst of the worst,” Abrams offered some advice. “Even though [Connecticut has] only executed one person in the last 29 years, and only eight inmates are on death row, this is the time to add two more.” Calling the crime, “the worst nightmare imaginable to any normal human being,” the conservative Savage directed his anger against the media. He basically accused journalists of downplaying this case because the victims were affluent and white. “Are they saying it’s offensive to poor people to cover a slaughter like this that occurs to rich people,” he continued. “Instead, we’re hearing about the drug-addicted slut Lindsay Low Brow. Instead, we see the story of the crimes of dumb football player who throws a dog into a pit bull ring.” The latest Lohan misadventure also was dissected on Abrams’ July 24 show when the host relied on another celebrity “familiar with Hollywood, drugs and rehab”—former “Partridge Family” child star Danny Bonaduce—for expert commentary and context. Asked if he was surprised that Lohan had been busted so soon after a rehab stint, Bonaduce responded with a kind of celebrity worldly weariness. “Not surprised at all,” he said. “I spent 30 days in the exact same rehab…The success rate of rehab is four to eight percent.” The Michael Vick saga, about the Atlanta Falcons quarterback indicted for dogfighting, also became fodder for detours into other matters. On the July 27 edition of The Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor,” guest host Michelle Malkin turned the case into a referendum on PETA, the animal rights group that has been a vocal critic of the quarterback. “Animal rights groups are pressuring Nike and other major companies to drop the NFL star,” explained Malkin as she interviewed PETA official Daphna Nachminovitch. “What happens if Michael Vick is exonerated of these charges?” Yet of all the talk hosts examined in PEJ’s Index last week, only one of them brought up the fantastic tale of Oscar, the Rhode Island nursing home cat with extraordinary powers. “Seen the story about that cat?” asked Rush Limbaugh on his July 26 show. “Beautiful cat. People in a nursing home have figured out this cat knows when residents of the nursing home are going to pass away. It gets up on their beds and cuddles up.” Right before launching into a discussion of the Democrats versus Alberto Gonzales, Limbaugh made the salient point about Oscar. You probably don’t want him hanging around you. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
3. Connecticut Murders - 6% 4. Immigration - 6% 5. US Domestic Terror Threat - 5% 6. Iraq Policy Debate - 5% 7. Health Care - 4% 8. Michael Vick Indicted - 3% 9. Lindsay Lohan - 3% 10. Fired Attorneys - 2% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. 2008 Campaign - 12% 2. Alberto Gonzales Controversies - 6% 3. US Domestic Terror Threat - 4%4. Iraq Policy Debate - 4% 5. Iraq Homefront - 3% 6. Events in Iraq - 3% 7. Connecticut Murders - 2% 8. Stocks Fall - 2% 9. Afghanistan - 2% 10. Immigration - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. Talk of terrorism was all over the mainstream news media last week. Like many outlets, ABC’s July 25 nightly newscast reported on the “dry run” warning issued by the Transportation Security Administration after several strange devices—such as a block of cheese and cell phone charger—were confiscated from airport passengers. “The concern was whether terrorists were conducting dress rehearsals for a possible attack,” explained correspondent Lisa Stark. “Given the heightened security worries this summer, officials aren’t taking any chances.” That same night, after a story on the battle against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, CNN’s Lou Dobbs brought the threat closer to home. He reported on Air Force General Victor Renuart’s concern that “there could be Al-Qaeda cells in this country” and the general’s belief that more military units are needed “to cope with the aftermath of any nuclear, chemical or biological attack within the United States.” A New York Daily News story asked a panel of experts to grade the country’s war on terror. “Turns out they’ve got a bad feeling in their guts, too” the article stated, referring to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s famous “gut feeling” that the U.S. faces heightened terror risks this summer. “The overall effort rates no better than a ‘C.’” The disquieting headline read: “Experts: U.S. still not safe.” The nation’s effort to combat terrorism was not the biggest story last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from July 22-27. That designation went to the 2008 Presidential campaign, which filled 12% of the newshole, and was fueled by the July 23 CNN/YouTube debate. The continuing showdown between the Democratic-led Congress and beleaguered attorney general Alberto Gonzales was the second-biggest story at 6%. But driven by the “dry run” airport scare, terror did finish as the third-biggest story of the week, filling 4% of the newshole. (It got the most coverage on cable at 6%.) And although there have been no successful major attacks in recent weeks, the subject has become a major staple of the media menu. Starting with the foiled car bomb plot in London on June 29, terrorism has been a top-five story in each of the past five weeks. In the week of July 1-6, the unfolding “doctors’ plot” to launch attacks in London and at the Glasgow airport helped make terror the top story in the media. The week after that, it was Chertoff’s “gut feeling” and a new report warning of a strengthened Al-Qaeda threat that made the top-five story list. And in the period from July 15-20, the National Intelligence Estimate again warning of a reconstituted Al-Qaeda helped make terror concerns the third-biggest story of the week. Yet this current outbreak of coverage was preceded by a long period of minimal media attention. Terrorism, or the threat of it, was not a top-10 story in nine of the 12 weeks leading up to the discovery of the UK car bomb plot. And only once in that three-month period—with the foiling of a plan to attack New Jersey’s Fort Dix—did the topic make the top-five story roster. The current terrorism narrative in the news media was triggered by a major event—the failed attack in London. But since then, it has been fueled largely by public pronouncements and reports that have reinforced the sense of heightened vulnerability without divulging specific details or warnings. That may leave many Americans confused about the actual threat level. And in the post 9/11 world, it is enough to trigger a summer of jittery terror news. The war in Iraq, which the Bush administration and supporters consider a key front in the war on terror while detractors see it as a diversion from that mission, helped round out the top-five story list last week. The policy debate (fourth-biggest story at 4%) was followed by the impact of the war on the homefront (fifth at 3%) and events in Iraq (sixth at 3%). PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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.) Presidential politics The much-ballyhooed CNN/YouTube debate—in which citizens prepared video questions for the Democratic candidates—helped make the 2008 campaign the top story of the week. (It led in all sectors, filling 8% of the newshole in newspapers, 13% online, 10% network TV, 15% cable, and 14% radio.) If the debate was the major event, the big news may have been made when frontrunner Hillary Clinton and lead challenger Barack Obama continued to spar over whether to sit down as President with enemy world leaders. On NBC’s July 25 “Today Show,” Tim Russert characterized that disagreement as a “microcosm of this campaign…Obama versus Clinton, experience versus change, convention versus inspiration.” “The tussle could be a turning point in the Democratic race, which has seen little direct engagement between the top two candidates until now,” declared the front-page July 27 Washington Post story.
An Attorney General under fire
The confrontation between Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Congress surfaced as a major story back in March, when the media began focusing on the controversy over a group of eight fired U.S. attorneys. Nearly five months later, tensions between Gonzales and Congress seem to have reached the boiling point. (The topic was the second-biggest story in all five media sectors last week.) And now the question of whether the AG has misled Congress about a number of issues—including the warrantless wiretap program—has brought terms like perjury into the discussion. The July 24 edition of the CBS nightly newscast contained an exchange in which Gonzales told a Senate committee that “I’ve decided to stay and fix the problem,” only to hear Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse respond: “It appears to a lot of people that you, sir, are in fact the problem.” In what now passes for understatement, PBS’s NewsHour on July 27 described the attorney general as being “under heavy fire.”
Horror in Connecticut
While it is relatively rare for individual crimes to make the top-10 list, news of the vicious home invasion that left three family members dead in Cheshire, Connecticut was the seventh-biggest story last week at 2%. The July 25 treatment of the tragedy on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show suggested both its horror and power—if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. The program looked at how such a nightmare could occur in a “quiet Connecticut town,” and described it as a “crime that goes beyond any kind of category—location or description.” The story got the most attention on radio (5%), thanks in large part to the efforts of conservative talk host Michael Savage, who angrily blamed the media—which he accused of liberal bias—of not paying enough attention to the horrific crime. The arrested quarterback, the troubled actress, and the spooky cat
Three stories that generated their share of buzz last week did not end up on PEJ’s top-story list. Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick’s not-guilty plea to charges related to dogfighting generated 2% of the overall coverage and finished just below the top-10 stories. Lindsay Lohan’s alcohol and drug bust, while creating a feeding frenzy on gossip web sites and in the entertainment media, finished further down and generated only 1% of the overall coverage.
Attracting even less coverage, according to the Index, was a riveting tale of animal instinct, and maybe even compassion. Oscar, a cat living in a Rhode Island nursing home, has the ability to determine when someone is near death and curls up at the person’s bedside for the final hours. He reportedly has a perfect track record of 25 such bedside visits in recent years. Oscar’s exploits were written up in the New England Journal of Medicine and featured on the July 26 editions of both the NBC and CBS evening news. The CBS report quoted one nurse summing it up this way: “He’s just a cat, he’s miserable half the time…wants his treats and then be left alone. But then when he feels that there’s something wrong, he steps right up.” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: On Monday, July 23, CNN's 7:00 pm ET edition of the Situation Room was preempted by a presidential debate and therefore was not included in this week's sample.By now, Senator Hillary Clinton is probably accustomed to gender-related questions as she pursues the most serious White House bid ever launched by a woman. During the July 23 CNN/YouTube debate, for example, she was asked to respond to the media’s focus on the issue of her not being “satisfactorily feminine.” While basic campaign reporting certainly doesn’t shy away from the implications of having a woman President, the talk show circuit tends to be even blunter (some might say cruder) about the subject. At least last week, that appeared to be the case as Clinton’s place on the gender spectrum proved to be a ripe topic for debate. On the July 20 edition of “Hardball,” the candidate’s torso was a focus of attention as the show aired footage of Clinton wearing a mildly plunging top with a caption that read “Senatorial Cleavage.” In response to substitute host Mike Barnicle’s question—which stemmed from a July 20 Washington Post story about the Senator’s neckline—two guests tried to parse the cleavage conundrum. “Directing attention to ‘is she showing cleavage or isn’t she’ is kind of a complete waste of time given the dire straits our democracy is in,” asserted writer and feminist Naomi Wolf. For her part, conservative talk host Melanie Morgan advised the New York Senator to “wear bi-partisan clothes [but] she shouldn’t wear her cleavage so low.” She then added, “But she probably should have been wearing stiletto heels underneath her pantsuit.” Three nights earlier on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show, the gender issue was raised in a quite different context. It was a follow-up to an interview with Salon.com in which Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic hopeful John Edwards, said Clinton is “just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is." “Let’s take that critique seriously,” said Carlson as he turned to his guests. “Is Hillary Clinton too manly to be president?” (A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of the Hill newspaper, dismissed the charge as “a cheap shot.”) On his July 19 show, conservative radio host Sean Hannity gave Ms. Edwards’ comment further attention. In what he called a “public service announcement” he played an audio clip of Bill Clinton’s response to Ms. Edwards: “I don’t think [Hillary is] trying to be a man.” “I’m just very thankful to know that,” retorted Hannity, with more than a hint of sarcasm. With Senator Clinton—and her femininity—featured as a story line, the Presidential campaign filled 13% of the airtime and was the second most-popular talk topic on radio and cable, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from July 15-20. (Cable shows paid far more attention to the campaign than the radio talkers did.) The one subject that commanded more attention last week than the Presidential race was the renewed debate over U.S. strategy in Iraq. Driven by the July 17 Senate all-nighter that ended with the defeat of a Democratic attempt to set withdrawal deadlines, the policy debate filled 19% of the talk menu, with some hosts decrying the all-nighter as a ploy or stunt and others seeing it as crucial moment in the Iraq argument.
The third-biggest talk topic was U.S. domestic efforts against terrorism (10%), a subject fueled by the release of a national intelligence report warning of a strengthened Al-Qaeda threat. And although the three most popular talk topics last week matched the top three stories in the general news Index, the talk shows went their own way on topics # 4 and #5. The fourth-biggest subject, immigration (6%), has been a favorite of a number of talk hosts, most notably CNN’s Lou Dobbs. And the fifth story is the controversy over a potential reprise of the Fairness Doctrine (5%), which could have major implications for talk radio. The discussion about reinstating the Fairness Doctrine—an FCC rule mandating balanced coverage of controversial issues that was repealed 20 years ago—has made the list of top-10 talk topics a few times in recent weeks. But in reality, it’s less of a debate over the virtues or shortcomings of the Fairness Doctrine (it’s hard to find a Fairness Doctrine supporter in the media) than a debate about whether reinstatement is a real possibility or a threat invented for ideological purposes. Conservative radio hosts such as Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have been pointing out that Democratic lawmakers are interested in reprising the rules to silence the voices on the right, which dominate talk radio. On Hannity’s July 19 Fox News Channel show, conservative host Laura Ingraham warned against its return, declaring, “I always thought that liberals were for free speech.” On the same show, Hannity’s liberal co-host Alan Colmes, downplayed the idea of a new Fairness Doctrine. “I don’t know where this is getting traction in Congress,” he said. “I don’t see enough of a push for this that is really is going to be an issue in Congress.” On his July 20 program, liberal radio host Ed Schultz characterized talk of a reinstated Fairness Doctrine as a “straw man” invented by conservatives. “They have 450 right-wing talkers in America,” he said. “They all read off the same talking points.’ The discussions of immigration were a return to a subject that united a number of talk hosts, most of them conservative. Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage and the most vocal of them all, Lou Dobbs, had energetically campaigned against the immigration bill (what they often called an “amnesty” bill). And in some quarters, they were credited or blamed (depending on your view) for a major role in its defeat on June 28. Last week Dobbs, who is a tireless advocate of tougher immigration enforcement, turned to another of his favorite subjects—the controversial jailing of to two former border agents for wrongdoing in an incident in which they shot a drug smuggler on the Mexican border. On his July 17 show, Dobbs reported on the beginning of Senate hearings on the case, saying, “I’ve been calling for Congressional hearings over the prosecution of former border patrol agents…for almost a year.” And, if viewers weren’t sure of Dobbs' feelings about the case, the wording of his viewer poll that night offered a clue: “Do you believe Congress is serious about correcting the outrageous miscarriage of justice against [agents] Ramos and Compean?” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index 3. US Domestic Terror Threat - 10% 4. Immigration - 6% 5. Fairness Doctrine - 5% 6. Brazilian Plane Crash - 3% 7. DC Escort Scandal - 3% 8. Events in Iraq - 2% 9. FDA/Imported Food Safety - 2% 10. NYC Steam Pipe Blast - 2% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. Iraq Policy Debate - 14% 2. 2008 Campaign - 9% 3. US Domestic Terror Threat - 6%4. Events in Iraq - 6% 5. Pakistan - 3% 6. Brazilian Plane Crash - 3% 7. NYC Steam Pipe Blast - 3% 8. Immigration - 2% 9. Japanese Earthquake - 2% 10. North Korea - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. National Public Radio correspondent David Welna harkened back to his student days to describe the all-night Senate debate on Iraq that began on July 17. “More than anything, it reminded me of a class being put in all-night detention in school,” he said, “with Majority Leader Harry Reid taking attendance every two hours.” In an AP story posted on Yahoo News July 18, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma issued this challenge to his Democratic colleagues across the aisle: “I bet I can stay up longer than they can.” Meanwhile, two presidential hopefuls used to talking in front of large audiences —Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton—found themselves with speaking slots around 4 a.m. The unusual session was called by Democrats to highlight differences among the parties over an Iraq exit strategy. The long parade of speeches ended when the forces that wanted to impose a troop withdrawal timetable on President Bush, mostly Democrats, fell eight votes short of ending debate and passing the measure. The event, derided as a cheap political stunt by some and as a way to pressure a change in Iraq policy by others, was a success by one metric—the level of press coverage. But what kind of coverage was it? In general, the media treated the event with uneasy mix of bemusement and solemnity. ABC’s July 18 newscast for example, included footage of numerous boxes of pizza being wheeled into the Capitol while quoting Reid and Republican Senator Trent Lott attacking their opponents in the starkest terms. (Thanks to aggressive reporting, we learned Reid doesn’t even like pizza.) No outlet, however, dismissed the political theater from both sides as self-aggrandizing nonsense as much as Comedy Central’s “Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” In a soupy British accent and bursting with outrage, the show’s “political theater critic” John “Olivier” bellowed that “In my entire career of watching political theater, never have I slogged through a more execrable production than last night’s withdrawal debate…It’s really just a flabby rehash of 1971’s repeal of Tonkin Gulf Resolution.” By the numbers, the Iraq policy debate was the top news story of the week, filling 14% of the newshole in PEJ’s News Coverage Index for July 15-20. (It was the top story in the newspaper (10%), network (19%), and radio (17%) sectors.) That meant that whatever one thought of the Democrats’ maneuver, this was the second week in a row that the argument over the efficacy of U.S. policy in Iraq was the leading story in the news. That recent comeback has occurred after media coverage of the Iraq debate had diminished noticeably following the May 24 Congressional vote funding the war without including withdrawal timetables. The second biggest story last week, at 9% of the newshole in PEJ’s News Index, was the 2008 presidential race. It was the top subject in cable news (19%). Those numbers can be attributed, in part, to CNN’s extensive pre-event coverage (or promotion) of the July 23 YouTube debate for Democratic candidates that is being co-hosted by the cable network. Two warning signs in the war on terror also made the top-five story list last week. The release of an intelligence report sounding alarm bells about a reconstituted Al-Qaeda threat helped make domestic terrorism the third-biggest topic at 6%. And news of growing instability in Pakistan—a nation that is a nominal U.S. ally, but is also home to growing Islamic radicalism and perhaps the core Al-Qaeda leadership—was the fifth-biggest story at 3%. Sandwiched in between, in the #4 position, was the continued violence inside Iraq (6% of the overall newshole, but the top online story at 13%.) Thus, if all the Iraq and terror stories were combined, including the instability in Pakistan, about 30% of the newshole last week was made up of coverage of the war on terror in its various permutations. PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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.) Although Iraq debate coverage was initially fueled by the Senate all-nighter, by the end of the last week the focus had shifted to July 19 briefings of Congress by the two leading Americans on the ground in Iraq, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. The take-away moment from that exchange for the media appeared to be Crocker’s remark to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “if there is one word, I would use to sum up the atmosphere in Iraq on the streets, in the countryside, in the neighborhoods and at the national level, that word would be ‘fear.’” Fear might have also been the operative word to describe the theme of the new National Intelligence Estimate assessing the threat posed by of Al-Qaeda six years after 9/11. In a report on PBS’s “NewsHour,” correspondent Margaret Warner summed up those findings by stating that “the terrorist network has regenerated key elements of its ability to attack the United States and is intensifying its efforts to put operatives here.” One conclusion in that report is that Al-Qaeda has also re-established a safe haven in Pakistan. That provided a context for another event—the violence (dozens died in several suicide attacks) and political instability that threatens President Pervez Musharraf’s regime in Pakistan—to become a major story last week. In a grim reminder of what’s at stake for the U.S., former State Department official Richard Haas told Brian Williams on NBC’s July 20 newscast that “there’s a lot of ways in which Pakistan could become a nightmare for us.” Not only would the demise of the reasonably friendly Musharraf government have implications for the war on terror, said Haas, it would raise the frightening specter of “the loss of…central government control” over Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. As for Musharraf’s future, Haas flatly predicted that “the time’s about up.” There are still about 15 months before the U.S. selects its next president, but the campaign debate season is already in full swing, at least in the media’s coverage. And last week, the YouTube-CNN debate—a new media hybrid that allows citizens to pose questions to candidates via homemade videos—was a major part of the reportage. About 40% of all the stories about the 2008 campaign last week was generated by CNN and almost half of those hyped the July 23 YouTube debate. Last week, YouTube was also making news for another innovation that has elbowed its way into campaign coverage—the music video in which half-dressed young women declare their rather impolitic affection for a candidate. It started with the “I got a crush on Obama” performed by Obama Girl and was just followed up by another video in which a group of fervent Rudy Giuliani admirers strut their stuff in a showdown with Obama’s smoldering mamas. In a story on this phenomenon that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week, correspondent Jake Tapper wondered about what may be an increasingly relevant question in this election season. “Surely, the campaign will not be decided by scantily clad models holding a pillow fight. Right?” Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ As mega-concerts go, the July 7 “Live Earth” event was ambitious as they come. The world-wide show—featuring musical artists from Kanye West to Madonna and the Police to Dave Matthews—was designed to highlight the environmental threat posed by global warming. It also included appearances by the issue’s best-known advocate, Al Gore. The reviews seemed polite, if not gushing. The New York Times declared that despite the environmental theme, “many bands just pumped out their regular material, satisfied to entertain between messages.” A blogger on Cinemablend.com, who chronicled the three-hour NBC primetime concert broadcast, dubbed it “an entertaining couple of hours followed by a painful ending section chock full of commercials and smarminess.” (NBC’s ratings were disappointing, with media accounts estimating the audience at about 2.7 million, less than normal summer Saturday viewership.) One place, however, where the musical extravaganza attracted a lot of attention was in the world of cable and radio talk shows. And for the most part, the reviews there were very much of the thumbs down variety. “I watched a lot of it,” said radio host Sean Hannity on his July 9 program. “It was awful. I mean, it was terrible…I guess you had a bunch of has-beens and wannabes that were out there singing for this thing.” “The [ratings] numbers for NBC Saturday night were dismal,” added Rush Limbaugh the same day. “Here we’ve got this big global warming move going on…which I really do think is dying a slow death.” For a group of largely conservative talk hosts, the concert was a chance to take aim at the global warming movement and Gore, the ex-Democratic presidential hopeful who has made environmentalism the linchpin of a career that some believe could entail another White House run. With the concert as the news hook, global warming was the fifth-biggest talk show topic last week (filling 6% of the airtime) according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from July 8-13. (By way of comparison, the subject was not among the top 10 stories in that week’s general news Index measured by PEJ.) The Iraq policy debate—driven by the Bush administration’s release of an interim progress report that offered a mixed assessment and triggered widely varying reactions—was the leading topic among talk hosts last week, at 22%. That very closely tracked the 20% of the newshole it filled as the lead story in the general Index. Two terrorism-related subjects combined to account for 16% of the talk menu. U.S. domestic terrorism (second-biggest at 9%) centered on a few developments. The biggest was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s now-famous “gut feeling” that the nation was entering a period of higher terrorism risk. Another was the release of a video from the International Association of Firefighters attacking GOP presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 9/11-related stewardship. The general war on terror story line (fourth-biggest topic at 7%) was fueled by news of a counterterrorism report warning of a stronger and reconstituted Al-Qaeda. The third-hottest talk topic (8%) last week was the 2008 presidential campaign. That conversation was driven, in part, by the continued turmoil in Republican John McCain’s campaign. But a private chat at an NAACP forum between Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards turned into talk fodder when the two candidates were overheard registering unhappiness with the crowded field participating in those events. The 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 talk shows’ attention last week to the re-ignited debate over Iraq, potentially growing terror threats and the presidential campaign closely mirrored the news priorities in the general news Index. But the talk hosts jumped into that crossroads of environmental policy and rock n’ roll reviewing with considerably more vigor than some of their colleagues in the media. On the July 9 Fox News Channel show that he co-hosts, Hannity opened by panning “Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts” and noting that “many people are criticizing the event today as not being impressive or as popular as Live Aid or Live 8 in the past.” Hannity then aired a clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the concert lashing out against talk hosts such as himself and Limbaugh by calling them “flat earthers” and “corporate toadies...telling you that global warming doesn’t exit.” Not surprisingly, the one ringing endorsement of the political-musical extravaganza came from liberal radio talk host Randi Rhodes. “The Live Earth thing was just the most amazing thing,” Rhodes declared on her July 9 program. “It was on seven continents…it was like a tasting menu in a fine New York restaurant.” “If you don’t think there’s global warming,” she added, “go outside.” If the critique of Live Earth got pretty impassioned last week, another political hot-button issue also emerged to stir partisans on both sides. The Washington D.C. madam scandal—which ensnared Republican Louisiana Senator David Vitter who acknowledged involvement with the escort service—was the sixth-biggest talk topic (5%). It was primarily driven by coverage on the MSNBC talk shows. One memorable July 11 exchange occurred between conservative-leaning MSNBC talk host Tucker Carlson and liberal activist Michael Rectenwald on the subject of whether a politician’s sex life is fair game. Citing the Vitter case, Rectenwald said public scrutiny was justified because “here we have candidates running on so-called family values platforms and legislating morality…This is a [Republican] Party that’s full of hypocrisy.” Disagreeing vigorously, Carlson responded that “you’re holding up this guy’s sex life to public ridicule and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” The proceedings deteriorated from there. Carlson told Rectenwald that “I want to ask you some questions about your sex life” and an angry Rectenwald retaliated by saying “You are despicable the way you are attacking me…you are an unapologetic Republican partisan.” Carlson countered by referring to his guest as a “creep” and “scandalmonger.” Then it was on to another segment. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index 3. Campaign 2008 - 8% 4. International War on Terror - 7% 5. Global Warming - 6% 6. DC Escort Scandal - 5% 7. Congress - 3% 8. Fired Attorneys Scandal - 3% 9. Wrestler Crime - 2% 10. Health Care Debate - 1% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. Iraq Policy Debate - 20% 2. Campaign 2008 - 7% 3. International War on Terror - 4%4. US Domestic Terror Threat - 4% 5. Events in Iraq - 4% 6. Lady Bird Johnson Dies - 4% 7. Pakistan Mosque Siege - 2% 8. 2003 Pizza Bomber Case - 2% 9. Fired Attorneys Scandal - 2% 10. DC Escort Scandal - 2% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. Note: The sample for PEJ’s Talk Show Index typically includes MSNBC’s Scarborough Country which aired at 9 pm ET. However, MSNBC has replaced that show at least temporarily by MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams. Accordingly, we have replaced Scarborough Country with MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams in our Talk Show Index sample.Early last week, as the nation awaited a progress report on Iraq, much of the media portrayed President Bush as a besieged leader clinging to an endangered strategy. ABC anchor Charles Gibson—noting that one official described the White House in “panic mode”—began his July 9 newscast by describing mounting challenges to Bush’s war policy. “A growing number of Republicans now say they want a new strategy for the war,” Gibson reported. “In other words, the number of problems for the President is rising while his support is falling.” By the end of a dramatic week—which among other things included a mixed progress report card on Iraq and another key GOP Senate defection—the President may have bought himself a few more months. (In September, General David Petraeus will deliver a more formal assessment of the war that could be politically decisive.) “Bush quiets GOP revolt over Iraq” declared the July 13 headline in the Los Angeles Times. “By reporting some headway in his buildup, he seems to persuade lawmakers to wait for a September evaluation.” If last week’s frantic political skirmishing failed to resolve the deadlock over Iraq policy, it did force the issue back onto the media front burner—after a considerable hiatus. The Iraq policy debate was easily the biggest story of the week, filling 20% of the newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from July 8-13. It was also the top story in every media sector: newspapers 15%; online 17%; network 29%; cable 22%; and radio 20%. And that marked a major media comeback. Although the war policy debate had been the top story in the first three months of 2007 (comprising 12% of the newshole), coverage slowed dramatically after May 24 Congressional votes to fund the war without imposing withdrawal timetables. That vote was seen as a major political win for the President and seemed to quiet the debate. It also dampened media interest in the political battle over the war. (In the period from May 27 through July 6, Iraq policy debate dropped to the seventh-biggest story, at 3%, finishing just ahead of the saga of the traveling TB victim.) Not only did the policy argument re-emerge as the No. 1 story last week (20%), it received nearly triple the amount of coverage generated by the second-biggest story, the 2008 presidential race (which filled 7% of the newshole). The campaign coverage last week was marked by the continuing upheaval in John McCain’s campaign, particularly the departure of several top aides. You’d have to go back to April 15-20, the week of the Virginia Tech massacre, to find a larger discrepancy between the first and second stories in coverage. The war on terror also was a major theme in the coverage last week. The story had two basic components. One, more international, largely concerned a report suggesting that Al Qaeda had substantially rebuilt its strength (4%). Just behind it in newshole was the related subject of the domestic terror threat (also 4%). That was fueled by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s much-publicized “gut” feeling that the U.S. was entering a period of higher terror risk. A third story directly related to Islamic extremism, the bloody siege of militants holed up in the “Red Mosque” in Pakistan, was the seventh-biggest story at 2%. The July 11 death of former First Lady Bird Johnson was the sixth-biggest story at 4%. And two crime and scandal stories also made the top 10. The “pizza bomber” case (eighth at 2%) took a strange turn last week when authorities concluded that a man blown up after a 2003 Pennsylvania bank robbery was actually an accomplice to the crime. And Louisiana GOP Senator David Vitter made news (tenth story at 2%) after acknowledging involvement with service of the infamous “D.C. Madam.” Vitter was ensnared in the scandal due in part to the investigative zeal of porn mogul Larry Flynt. PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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.) Among the subplots in last week’s media coverage was an apparent divide in the message on terror. One report came in the form of the new warning of a reconstituted Al-Qaeda—in a counterterrorism report headlined "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West." The report sounded alarm bells and generated considerable media attention. But on his July 13 Fox News Channel show, Brit Hume interviewed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who refuted claims that the terror group has regained its past strength. “It’s not as if this is an organization that’s gotten stronger and stronger and stronger so that they’re now back to the point that they were on September 11,” Rice said. “I just don’t think that’s true.” The confusion was only added to by the coverage of what some journalists and critics saw as the subjective nature of Homeland Security Chief Chertoff’s warning of a possible terrorist attack in the U.S. On CBS’s July 11 “Early Show” Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer tried to parse what Chertoff meant when, during an interview with the Chicago Tribune, he talked about his “gut feeling” that American was in a period of increased risk. “I think the question here is what does the Secretary know that he is not telling us,” Schieffer said. “He says he has a ‘gut feeling,’ but if this turns out to be no more than that, I think you’re going to see very fierce reaction from Democrats…I think the Secretary is going to have to tell us more than we know now.” Schieffer suggested that without more information, Democrats might accuse Chertoff of trying “to change the subject” at a time “when the President’s popularity is at an all-time low” and “support for the Iraq war is crumbling in the Senate. Evidence of that crumbling support was certainly in the coverage last week, even as President Bush was asking for more time for his “surge” in Iraq. On Lou Dobbs’s July 10 CNN show, senior political analyst Bill Schneider discussed new poll numbers indicating that Bush’s job approval rating had fallen to 29%. According to the poll, 62% of Americans think the Iraq war was a mistake and 71% want to remove most of the U.S. troops by next April. “The public has clearly run out of patience,” declared Schneider. Against that backdrop, the coverage of the Iraq progress report released last week also had its nuances. At a July 12 press conference, the President discussed the interim report on the war that showed progress in eight key benchmarks, unsatisfactory results in eight more and mixed results in two areas. The fact that the report card contained some good news may have influenced some coverage and headlines. A number of news organizations played it as a divided message. “Report on Iraq shows mixed results,” declared the headline on the Yahoo! News site on July 12. “White House gives mixed review for Iraq,” was the reaction on the MSNBC site. But others saw more upside. On the CNN site, the headline was a bit more upbeat with “Bush: Iraq benchmarks report ‘cause for optimism.’” And some also struck differing tones on Bush’s success in handling unrest in his own party over Iraq policy. On July 13, the Los Angeles Times was crediting Bush with postponing a GOP revolt on the war, while the CBS Evening News was reporting one. “A new challenge to the President’s war strategy—this time from his own party,” announced anchor Katie Couric. The news was that veteran Republican Senators John Warner and Richard Lugar were working on legislation to require the President to come up with a plan for thinning out the troop presence. Six months after the President announced his January 10 troop “surge” plan, a fateful political showdown over the conduct of the war may still be two months away. But the debate over Bush’s strategy, at least for last week, once again dominated the news landscape. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: Due to technical reasons, the daytime programs of CNN and Fox News from Tuesday, July 10, were recorded from 2:30 - 3:00 pm ET rather than the typical 2:00 - 2:30 pm ET.The U.K. terror plot that hit the headlines June 29 with the discovery of two undetonated car bombs in London took a strange and disturbing turn last week.
One day later, attackers drove a vehicle into the Glasgow airport terminal, triggering a panicky, fiery scene, convincing British authorities to raise the alert level to “critical” and generating stepped-up security in the United States. Then the unusual nature of the plot—and the plotters—began to unfold. “Shocking revelations that doctors were at the heart of that British terror plot,” declared Katie Couric on CBS’s July 2 newscast. The next morning, while reporting that six suspects in the case were doctors or medical students, ABC’s “Good Morning America” hammered away at the theme of “professional healers who were apparently determined to kill.” “It’s a very disturbing development morally and practically,” asserted ABC’s Terry Moran. “Doctors are trusted all over the world.” On the July 4 “Today” program, NBC correspondent Lisa Myers reported that “the British government now is looking at how to tighten scrutiny of foreign doctors who come here to practice medicine.” By the end of the week, there was an alarming, if tenuous, American connection to the saga. Anchoring a July 6 ABC radio newscast, Charles Gibson noted that “months before their unsuccessful attempt to bomb the entertainment district in London and the airport in Glasgow, some of the terror suspects were thinking about coming to the U.S.” The FBI confirmed that two of the suspects had contacted an agency about practicing medicine in this country. The London and Glasgow terror attacks failed to inflict serious casualties, and the Fourth of July passed without incident in the United States. But what Terry Moran called “the doctors’ plot” (ABC ran the caption “Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde” during his report) was enough of a man-bites-dog story to lead the coverage last week. According to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, the subject filled 14% of the newshole in the period from July 1-6. It was also the No. 1 story in the newspaper (12%), online (22%) and network news (19%) sectors. (The previous week, it had been the fourth-biggest story at 5%. But only the June 29 discovery of the two car bombs occurred early enough to be counted in that Index.) The political firestorm that erupted over President Bush’s July 2 commutation of Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s 30-month sentence in the Valerie Plame case was the second-biggest story last week (at 11%). And the 2008 Presidential race was punctuated by one of those yardsticks that attracts plenty of media attention, even if it may be a forgotten statistic when the votes come start to come in months from now. Driven by the release of second-quarter 2007 fundraising numbers, the campaign was third last week, generating 8% of the overall coverage. The immigration debate—the lead story at 12% in last week’s Index—slipped to fourth (4%) as the fallout from the bill’s June 28 demise waned. The fifth-biggest story (at 3%) was a potpourri of July Fourth-related events that included fireworks accidents and a three cent rise in the cost of beer. Not included was the big upset at the July 4 Coney Island hot dog-eating contest where American Joey Chestnut devoured 66 dogs in 12 minutes to beat the previously invincible Japanese champ Takeru Kobayashi. That stunning display of epicurean athleticism attracted only a minimal amount of coverage. PEJ’s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a 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 President’s decision to commute “Scooter” Libby’s sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury in the case involving the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame did not generate quite as much coverage as Libby’s conviction in early March. (The conviction was the top story that week at 13%.) But the President’s action did ignite a heated debate in political and media circles. It was the top story last week in the two media sectors (cable news at 20% and radio at 11%) that are home to the talk shows. On the July 5 edition of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews aired a heavyweight battle of sound bites. Interviewed on a radio program, former President Bill Clinton—whose 1998 impeachment was based on charges of obstruction and perjury—lashed out at the Bush administration. “They believe that they should be able to do what they want to do and the law is a minor obstacle,” he said. White House spokesman Tony Snow responded partly in Yiddish by asserting that “I don’t know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it.”
On the same night on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” commentators Mark Steyn and Juan Williams got into a high-decibel debate on the subject. Supporting the President’s decision, Steyn said that “what’s at issue here” in the Libby conviction “is the criminalization of politics.” Williams, a critic of the move, responded that the case was “not about disagreeing…it’s about managing and manipulating intelligence” in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The other big political story last week, the 2008 presidential campaign, was fueled by the fundraising numbers. The news was good for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, who collected more than $32 million in the quarter, outraising Hillary Clinton and setting a new fundraising record for Democrats. The news was grim for Republican contender John McCain, who raised slightly more than $11 million and began cutting staff. For McCain, once the presumed GOP favorite whose campaign has staggered early, the numbers seemed to fit the media narrative for him thus far. Thus, this first paragraph in the New York Times July 3 page-one story: “The presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who once seemed poised to be his party’s nominee in 2008, acknowledged yesterday that it was in a political and financial crisis as a drop in fund-raising forced it to dismiss dozens of workers and aides and retool its strategy on where to compete.” Some observers have speculated that McCain—perhaps the most vocal supporter of the Iraq troop buildup among the presidential hopefuls—could benefit from a respite from bad news about the war. And though Iraq has not vanished from the headlines, coverage of the war—and particularly the debate over strategy—has recently tailed off. Last week events on the ground in Iraq amounted to the sixth-biggest story (3%) followed immediately by the policy debate (also 3%). This marks the sixth week in a row that the argument over Iraq strategy failed to make the Index’s roster of top-five stories. That can be traced back to the May 24 Congressional votes to fund the war without withdrawal timetables, an event that was seen at the time as a major victory for President Bush. That stands in stark contrast to the first three months of the year when the policy debate dominated the news agenda. Last week, even veteran Republican Senator Pete Domenici’s decision to break with Bush over Iraq—a move that mirrors recent statements by GOP Senators Richard Lugar and George Voinovich—failed to move the policy debate up past seventh place in the Index. Yet, with all sides gearing up for a potentially decisive showdown over the war that could start with this month’s interim progress report on the conflict, the Washington-based battle over Iraq may once again command the media’s singular attention. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ Note: Because of the July 4 holiday, no editions of the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, or any of MSNBC's regular programming were available for inlcusion on that day. In addition, the 5 pm radio headlines from ABC news radio and CBS news radio on Tuesday, July 3rd, were not included in this week's sample due to a technical error.“Thanks Lou, for presenting the views of legal American citizens,” wrote “Joan from Virginia.” “We love you Lou. Your hard work paid off. Thank you. Thank you,” enthused “Fred from Florida.” “Thank you Lou Dobbs for leading the charge against this immigration bill,” added “E. from Washington.” In the weeks between the May 17 introduction of the Senate immigration legislation and its June 28 demise, many hosts—including conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity—mounted an aggressive campaign against the bill. But over the long haul, no one devoted more energy to derailing what he called the “amnesty” measure than Dobbs, the veteran CNN personality who has transformed himself from a pinstriped chronicler of the corporate boardroom to a full-blown populist, though he still has the suits. (Critics might use other words to describe him.) In the last three months, from April 1-June 29, Dobbs devoted more than a quarter (26%) of the airtime on his nightly show to immigration. (That’s almost twice as much attention as he gave to the next leading subject, the Iraq war policy debate.) Last week, the immigration debate was the most popular cable and radio talk topic, filling 24% of the airtime, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from June 24-29. And nearly half the week’s talk stories on immigration originated from Dobbs’s program, including the segment in which he basked in the citizen kudos. While immigration dominated the talk menu, the failed London car bomb plot—which occurred on the last day of the week examined in this Index—was the second-biggest topic (12%). It was a much bigger subject on cable than radio. The controversy over Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive and unprecedented influence over policy in the White House, explored in a Washington Post series, was next at 9%. For liberal critics of the Vice President such as radio’s Randi Rhodes and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, the Post’s articles were irresistible ammunition. With last week largely devoid of major campaign news, the 2008 White House race was the sixth-biggest talk subject (filling 6% of the time, plummeting from 25% the previous week). You have to go back to April 15-20, when the horrific Virginia Tech shooting spree consumed 63% of the talk newshole, to find a week when the campaign got less attention on the talk shows. The talk universe topic list continues to be somewhat different than the agenda seen in PEJ’s more general News Coverage Index each week. Four subjects that made talk’s top-10 story list failed to register that high in the general news Index. The grisly family murder/suicide apparently perpetrated by professional wrestler Chris Benoit was the fourth-biggest topic at 7% in talk. Socialite Paris Hilton’s release from jail was the tenth-biggest subject at 3%. The other two subjects that generated more talk attention than general coverage involved the media directly. One was the exchange of words between Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, and conservative commentator Ann Coulter over civility in politics (seventh at 6%). The other was an argument over ideology on the talk airwaves (eighth at 4%). The 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. Paris Hilton’s return from incarceration and the Benoit tragedy were two very different crime stories that intrigued some talk hosts last week. The Benoit case—in which police say he killed his wife and seven-year-old son before hanging himself—may end up opening a window on the issue of steroids in the physically demanding world of pro wrestling. On the June 28 edition of MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country,”—the program that devoted by far the most attention to the issue—guest host Dan Abrams discussed the subject with pro grapplers “Johnny B. Badd” and “the Lethal Weapon.” As the screen displayed the statistic that pro wrestlers have death rates seven times higher than the general population, Abrams said “we’ve had former wrestlers on this program...and every one of them talks about funerals and the fact that a disproportionate number of wrestlers have died. There’s got to be some explanation for why so many wrestlers are having so many problems.” Most of the talk of Hilton’s June 26 release from jail—following her assertion that she found God and is a changed person—came on the Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity & Colmes.” (The “celebutante’s” June 27 interview with CNN’s Larry King also tripled King’s normal audience.) The Elizabeth Edwards/Ann Coulter face-off was a media-generated flare-up that started when Edwards called into the June 26 edition of MSNBC’s “Hardball” to confront Coulter and ask her “to stop the personal attacks” on her husband, John Edwards, and others. Coulter responded with: “OK, great the wife of a presidential candidate is calling in asking me to stop speaking.” The next night, the battle continued when John Edwards appeared on “Hardball” to declare that “when people like Ann Coulter…engage in this kind of hate mongering, you have to stand up to them.” Coulter got a hearing on the June 28 “O’Reilly Factor” where she said she was undaunted by the Elizabeth Edwards call. “I’m more of a man than any liberal is,” she declared, “so…I don’t care.” (For those of you with a more skeptical bent, it was pointed out on both “Hardball” and “The O’Reilly Factor” that Coulter has used the confrontation to sell more of her books and John Edwards has turned the dustup into a fundraising tool.) Another media-related issue that is generating momentum on talk radio centers around political balance on the airwaves. And it was ignited, in part, by a recent report concluding that conservative hosts overwhelmingly dominate the radio microphones. That has quickly developed into its own ideological argument with some conservatives warning of a return to the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation repealed 20 years ago that required broadcasters to air balancing points of view on controversial public policy issues. On his June 27 show, Limbaugh referred to his program as one “that frightens and scares the American left to the point that they want to deny this program Constitutional access to the First Amendment.” A day later, Ed Schultz, one of a much smaller group of successful liberal hosts, said “I can guarantee you folks that no one is out there saying ‘let’s have the Fairness Doctrine.’” And he blamed conservatives for trying to silence liberal voices. “How come I’m still on the air?” Schultz added. “They don’t want us here.”
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index 3. VP Cheney Controversies - 9% 4. Wrestler Crime - 7% 5. Ohio Woman - 6% 6. Campaign 2008 - 6% 7. Ann Coulter's Comments - 6% 8. Fairness Doctrine - 4% 9. Iraq Policy Debate - 3% 10. Paris Hilton - 3% Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index 1. Immigration - 12% 2. Campaign 2008 - 6% 3. Supreme Court Actions - 6%4. UK Terror - 5% 5. VP Cheney Controversies - 5% 6. Lake Tahoe Fire - 5% 7. Events in Iraq - 4% 8. Iraq Policy Debate - 4% 9. Ohio Woman - 3% 10. Texas/Plains Flooding - 3% Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. |
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