News Index

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After more than 40 days of debate—and the dramatic intervention of President Bush—the biggest domestic issue of the year apparently was resolved on June 28 when the immigration bill collapsed in the Senate.

So it was no surprise that immigration was the biggest story last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from June 24-29. It filled 12% of the newshole in PEJ’s Index and was dominant in radio (27% of the airtime) as some conservative talk hosts who led the charge against the bill celebrated.

“The power structure tried to tell you had no power…you were zero, you were people to be laughed at,” radio host Michael Savage told his listeners. “This is your victory.”

Yet for all the politics and passion that marked the immigration debate, the outcome was overshadowed by an event that occurred the following day an ocean away.

The June 29 discovery of two car bombs in densely trafficked parts of London suddenly put the specter of terrorism front and center on the media agenda. The unsuccessful attack caused no casualties and was not on U.S. soil. It occurred on the last day of the week examined in this Index, while the subsequent attack on the Glasgow airport and the arrest of several terror suspects happened too late to be included in this week’s count.

Even so, the UK scare— reflecting terrorism’s power as a newsmaker—finished as the week’s fourth leading story. It filled 5% of the newshole and was the top story on cable at 13%. A more telling reflection of media interest is the fact that on June 29, the foiled plot accounted for 27% of all that day’s news coverage, including 30% of the network news airtime and 63% of the cable news airtime.

In the U.S. media, the story quickly took on American security overtones.

“Let’s be clear,” former UN Ambassador John Bolton asserted on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.” “This kind of terrorist attack, if it’s possible in London, is possible in any major American city. So I think it warrants very close scrutiny.”

CNN’s “Situation Room” aired video of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly standing next to Mayor Michael Bloomberg as he announced that “we have checkpoints that we’ve instituted…on bridges and some located in Manhattan. We’re checking parking garages…to look for suspicious vehicles.”

The immigration vote and terror plot were just two elements of a crowded news week. Only three percentage points separated the second-biggest story (the 2008 presidential campaign at 6%) from the tenth story (Texas floods at 3%).

In that kind of busy news environment, two events that might have otherwise attracted more attention—professional wrestler Chris Benoit’s apparent family murder/suicide spree and socialite Paris Hilton’s release from jail complete with a professed embrace of God—failed to make the top-10 list.

Five of the top-10 stories were Washington-centric, including the immigration battle, the race for the White House, a major ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (third-biggest at 6%), controversy surrounding the secretive power and influence of Vice-president Dick Cheney (fifth-biggest at 5%) and the Iraq policy debate (eighth-biggest at 4%). The week’s top story list also included several spot-news events including the fire near Lake Tahoe (sixth-biggest at 5%), the case of murdered Ohio woman Jessie Davis (ninth at 3%), and the Texas floods.

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 biggest news out of the Supreme Court last week was a historic 5-4 ruling against two school desegregation plans that used racial criteria to implement diversity. According to the June 29 Boston Globe account, the decision could have major implications for the public education system, making “hundreds of school-assignment plans across the country, including roughly 20 in Massachusetts, subject to legal challenges.”

One overarching story line as portrayed in the coverage was the top court’s ideological tilt following the relatively recent confirmation of President Bush’s nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

On the June 29 PBS “NewsHour” correspondent Margaret Warner noted that “the Supreme Court term that just ended under Chief Justice John Roberts was marked by key 5-4 decisions that cheered conservatives.” They included the school desegregation ruling, a decision upholding a late-term abortion ban, and the striking down of part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. (Thanks to heavy coverage from the “NewsHour,” the Supreme Court was the leading story, at 13%, in network news.)

Cheney’s emergence as a top-five story last week is due largely to a four-part series in the Washington Post that began on June 24 and examined the tenure of someone the Post called “the most influential man ever to hold the [vice-president’s] office.” The series, which documented Cheney’s unprecedented use of his office to achieve policy and political goals, was seized on by liberal talkers such as radio host Randi Rhodes and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann who have been consistently critical of the vice-president.

The story driving coverage of the Iraq policy debate was the decision of two Republican Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee – Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio—to publicly distance themselves from the President’s strategy in Iraq.

Still, for all the dramatic events of last week, none was covered as intensely as the failed attack in London. And cable viewers were quickly swamped with the familiar, frightening images of the war on terror—swarming law enforcement officials, cordoned off streets and neighborhoods, and briefings from grim-faced public officials.

While the threat of terrorism can recede at times from the media radar screen, even a thwarted event such as one in London quickly refocuses attention on life in the post 9/11 world. The speed and intensity with which that occurs reveals the extent to which, amid debates about Iraq and Iran, the war on terror at home lingers as a kind of simmering worry just beneath the surface.

That led some of the discussions on TV to become almost philosophical.

On his June 29 “Hardball” show, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews complained about how terror concerns had led to the erection of major traffic barriers denying access to the most important buildings in Washington.

“That’s at a high price,” he said. “We’ve shut down our visible democracy here, haven’t we?”

“We’ve not really learned how to be safe and open at the same time,” responded his guest and Washington’s delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

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The big campaign news last week was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement he was dropping his Republican affiliation, a move that sparked frenzied speculation that the billionaire centrist might launch an independent bid for the presidency.

Media interest in Bloomberg’s intentions helped make the 2008 White House race the biggest story in the general news Index, as it accounted 11% of the overall coverage last week. And the cable and radio talk hosts were even more fascinated by the presidential battle, which was the leading topic and filled 25% of talk airtime, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for June 17-22.

Bloomberg generated the big buzz last week. But there was a difference in how the broader mainstream media and the talk hosts handled the topic. In the general news Index, Bloomberg truly dominated—he was the subject of about 45% of all the stories while about 20% of the stories were primarily about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In the talk show world, however—where Clinton always seems to be a handy lightning rod—that difference was considerably narrower. Bloomberg was a chief subject in fewer talk segments (40%) and Clinton was involved in more of them (26%).

Sure, the “will he or won’t he?” Bloomberg discussion got a good going over on the talk shows. But so did the news that Clinton got booed during a June 20 appearance at the “Take Back America” conference where the liberal, anti-war audience had some problems with her record on the war.

On MSNBC’s “Countdown,” the caption read “Boo Tube” as liberal host Keith Olbermann opened his June 20 show with a recap of the “Take Back America” episode.

“Senator Hillary Clinton has made it clear she has no intention of apologizing for her 2002 vote authorizing the war in Iraq,” Olbermann noted. “Today, the liberal base of the Democratic Party made it clear that it has no intention of stopping asking her to do so.”

On the same night, the Fox News Channel’s conservative co-host Sean Hannity quizzed an anti-war activist about Clinton’s views on Iraq. Accusing the New York Senator of being “politically expedient,” Hannity asked: “She doesn’t have any core values on this, does she?”

If Bloomberg and the Clinton boo birds helped drive their interest in the campaign, the talk hosts’ battle against the immigration bill helped make that subject the second-most popular topic (at 12%). The case of the missing Ohio woman Jessie Davis—whose boyfriend was subsequently charged with her murder—was next at 8%. (The cable hosts discussed that story, but radio hosts took a pass.) The fourth-biggest talk topic was charges of White House ethical lapses (4%) launched by two liberal hosts – Olbermann and radio talker Randi Rhodes. And fallout from the intra-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank and Gaza was the fifth-biggest story 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.

If the presidential campaign has been the dominant talk story in recent weeks—it was the top topic in four of the past six weeks—then the battle over immigration legislation has been a pretty close second.

Since the May 17 announcement of a Senate compromise, a number of hosts have launched a full-fledged attack on what they have dubbed an “amnesty” bill. That was the case as well last week, after the legislation was resurrected and sent to the Senate for one last ditch effort at passage. (That effort appears to have finally failed when the bill came out on the short end of a crucial June 28 vote to end debate.)

Even as such vocal opponents of the measure as radio hosts Michael Savage and Sean Hannity continued to denounce it last week, more than half of all the segments devoted to the subject originated with CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

On June 22, Dobbs—who has made opposition to the immigration bill the hallmark of his show—aired a report on talk radio that seemed intended to rebut lawmakers’ criticism of the talk hosts’ role in the immigration debate (One of the more noteworthy comments came from Mississippi Senator Trent Lott who complained that “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”)

“Well, it’s amazing,” offered Dobbs at the end of the report. “It keeps coming back to who do you trust. And I’m gonna go with just about anybody but an elected official in this day and age…Whether you like a talk radio host or not, they have performed a very important function here.”

One notable aspect of the current Talk Index is that half of its top-10 stories don’t match the general news Index’s top-10 story list. Such spot news stories as the Texas floods and the South Carolina inferno that claimed nine firefighters failed to make the talkers’ roster along with the Senate passage of an energy bill, the fighting in Afghanistan, and the impact of the Iraq war on the U.S. homefront.

Conversely, the White House ethical issues and the fired U.S. attorneys controversy (sixth-biggest topic at 3%) were top talk stories that didn’t generate much general news coverage. The Iraq policy debate (ninth-biggest talk topic at 2%) and the fallout from the Duke lacrosse rape case (tenth-biggest at 2%) also failed to make the general news Index’s list of top stories.

One other top-10 talk topic was one uniquely suited for the ideological and argumentative talk show culture. The “talk hosts wars” (eighth at 3%) conversation involved liberal radio host Ed Schultz’s June 22 call for more political diversity in talk radio.

Citing a recent report indicating that conservative talk hosts overwhelmingly dominate the airwaves, Schultz—a syndicated talker who is heard on more than 100 stations—declared that “all progressive talkers seem to be fighting over the same 100 stations…And there are radio companies in this country that broadcast absolutely zero seconds of anything other than hard right-wing talk. Are they operating in the public’s interest?”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. 2008 Campaign - 25%

2. Immigration - 12%

3. Ohio Woman - 8%

4. White House Scandals - 4%

5. Palestinian Conflict - 4%

6. Fired US Attorneys - 3%

7. Events in Iraq - 3%

8. Talk Show Wars - 3%

9. Iraq Policy Debate - 2%

10. Duke Lacrosse Scandal - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. 2008 Campaign - 11%

2. Events in Iraq - 9%

3. Palestinian Conflict - 7%

4. Ohio Woman - 5%

5. Immigration - 4%

6. Charleston Fire - 3%

7. Energy Debate - 3%

8. Iraq Homefront - 2%

9. Afghanistan - 2%

10. Texas Flooding - 2%

Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.

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As coverage of the crowded and unsettled 2008 Presidential race has accelerated in recent months, one recurring story line has focused not on the 19 candidates already in the race—but on a few people still on the sidelines.

With surveys indicating that Republicans are less satisfied with their party’s presidential hopefuls than Democrats, a good deal of this coverage has focused on former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Republican Senator Fred Thompson, with the latter expected to enter the race soon. On the Democratic side, there’s been occasional coverage speculating on a possible bid by former Vice President Al Gore.

But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s June 19 announcement that he was dropping his Republican affiliation triggered a frenzy of speculation that is unusual even in this media-saturated campaign season. Although Bloomberg has downplayed any desire to seek the White House, the prospect of the largely non-ideological billionaire running as an independent candidate jolted the political Richter scale.

The 2008 presidential contest was the leading story last week, filing 11% of the newshole in the period from June 17-22, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (It was the top event in the cable (18%) and radio (12%) sectors last week.) And about 45% of all the campaign stories PEJ examined involved Bloomberg.

It seemed like everybody was talking about New York’s mayor. He and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger were the smiling cover boys on the June 25 issue of Time magazine. Writing in the June 24 Washington Post, Ed Rollins, who helped direct Ross Perot’s 1992 third-party candidacy, basically embraced the idea of a Bloomberg run in a column headlined, “Come on In, Mike. It Could Be a Wild Ride.”

“Here at home, a political bombshell tonight,” was how CBS anchor Russ Mitchell broke the news of Bloomberg’s party change on the June 19 newscast. “There has been speculation Bloomberg might run for president as an independent.”

“Can a brilliant—and he is—successful—and he is—competent—he’s proven to be—Jewish executive be elected President of the United States?” That’s the question liberal radio talk host Ed Schultz asked his listeners on June 20.

That same day Bloomberg’s hometown paper, The New York Times, ran this page-one headline that was sober without foreclosing any options: “Bloomberg Cuts Ties to G.O.P., Fueling Further Talk of ’08 Bid: Mayor Faults Both Parties as Timid on Big Issues.”

While the Bloomberg boomlet fueled coverage of the White House race, violence and tensions in the Middle East also generated major attention last week. The major U.S. offensive, “Operation Arrowhead Ripper,” against Iraq insurgents helped make events in that country the second-biggest story of the week (9%). The situation on the ground in Iraq was the top story in the newspaper (10%), online (15%) and network TV (12%) sectors.

Given the continuing fallout from the Palestinian fighting that effectively gave Hamas control of the Gaza Strip and left Fatah in charge of the West Bank, the Palestinian crisis was next at 7%.

Two breaking-news tragedies also made the top-10 story list. The disappearance of pregnant Ohio woman Jessie Davis (her body was subsequently found and her boyfriend charged with her murder), was the fourth-biggest story at 5%. And the June 18 furniture store blaze that claimed nine firefighters in Charleston, South Carolina was the number six story at 3%.

Immigration was the fifth-biggest story (4%) with the fate of the controversial immigration bill hanging in the balance. While coverage is likely to spike if there is a final legislative showdown this week, the story cooled a bit last week after being the top subject from June 10-15.

News about the Iraq war last week also confirmed a recent pattern in the coverage. Given the significant U.S. military offensive and the announcement that 14 U.S. troops had died in a two-day period, events in Iraq constituted the second-biggest story. With a number of stories focused on care given to wounded veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan, the impact of the war at home was also a top-10 story last week (eighth at 2%).

At the same time, the Iraq policy debate—the Washington-based battle over war strategy—generated only 1% of last week’s coverage and failed to make the top-10 story list. Those findings are indicative of a trend in recent weeks in which coverage of the political debate over the war has diminished substantially.

For the first three months of this year, PEJ found that the policy debate was the leading news subject by a large margin, accounting for 12% of all the coverage. (The next biggest story was the 2008 campaign at 7%.) But on May 24, after a lengthy political showdown, Congress approved war funding without including troop withdrawal timetables. Since then—in the period from May 27-June 22—the policy debate has been the sixth-biggest story attracting 3% of the coverage. This suggests that the May 24 vote was viewed as a major victory for President Bush over the Democratic-led Congress that, temporarily, brought some kind of resolution to the policy fight.

There is reason to believe the subject will heat up again in September (if not sooner), when General David Petraeus is slated to deliver his much-anticipated progress report on the U.S. troop surge.

For the second week in a row, Palestinian conflict was a top-five story as the action moved from the battlefield to the diplomatic arena as the U.S. and its allies tried to bolster the new Fatah-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met in Washington last week to discuss the new situation in the Palestinian territories. And a June 21 NPR “Morning Edition Report” that speculated on the likelihood of an Israeli military assault against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip reported that “the Israeli government is trying to figure out how to deal with the newly divided Palestinian population.”

Yet for all the concern about the Middle East, the U.S. presidential race generated the most media attention for the second time in three weeks. And if speculation about Michael Bloomberg joining the fray fueled much of that coverage, it was a pretty good week for another possible entry as well.

“He’s not even officially running yet, but Republican Fred Thompson is certainly shaking up the race for his party’s presidential nomination,” declared Fox News Channel daytime anchor Jane Skinner on June 19.

The good news for the ex-Senator and “Law & Order” star? A new Rasmussen Reports poll among likely Republican primary voters revealed that Thompson, while still not officially a candidate, is now leading the GOP field, topping previous frontrunner Rudy Giuliani by a razor slim 28% to 27% tally.

“What it really is telling us,” said pollster Scott Rasmussen, “is the rest of the field hasn’t caught fire.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

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Some conservative talk hosts—who one week earlier were celebrating the apparent defeat of the immigration bill—found themselves in an unusual position last week. They were up against key figures in the GOP—including President Bush—who helped resurrect the measure on June 14.

On his June 15 radio program, Sean Hannity drew firm distinctions between conservatives and Republicans.

“We stand up for our principles regardless of any party affiliation,” he said. “We find ourselves now at odds with Republicans for one reason and one reason only…They keep compromising their values.”

One reason for the passion was that Senate Republican whip Trent Lott of Mississippi made talk radio part of the issue, blaming the talk culture in part for derailing the bill. “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem,” Lott had said.

That made Lott a target. “What are we gonna do about Mississippi Senator Trent Lott...one of the engineers of the Senate immigration bill, the amnesty bill,” Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners June 15.

“Senator Lott’s out there saying the problem with this is talk radio,” he continued. “Now what does that mean?”

That intra-party anger and the passion over the reborn Senate bill is one reason why immigration was the biggest talk topic last week, filling 17% of all the airtime on cable and radio talk shows, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from June 10-15.

That marked only the second time all year that immigration was the leading talk subject. An organized and energized talk culture has been on DEFCON 1 ever since the May 17 announcement of the so-called compromise immigration bill. And thus, this marked the fifth week in a row that immigration was a top five talk topic.

The 2008 presidential race, which had recently been the most dominant talk subject (and the top story in five of the past eight weeks), was a close second last week, filling 15% of the airtime in the Index.That was followed by the Iraq policy debate (8%), and the continuing investigation into the fired U.S. attorneys (5%), which last week included Congressional subpoenas for former White House staffers Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor. The fifth-leading topic (4%) was the situation inside Iraq where the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra for the second time threatened to further inflame sectarian violence.

Although immigration was the lead story on both the talk shows and in PEJ’s more general News Coverage Index (at 10%) as well last week, there were bigger differences elsewhere.The second-leading story last week in the news Index overall (at 9%) was the intra-Palestinian feuding that left Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip and Fatah in control of the West Bank. It was a much smaller story in the talk universe, only the eighth-biggest topic at 3%. (The only radio host to tackle the subject was Michael Savage.)

When it came to percentage of newshole, there was not much difference in coverage of the controversial June 10 conclusion to HBO’s “The Sopranos.” (2% of the News Coverage Index, 3% of the Talk Show Index). The arguments over the final restaurant scene did not make it one of the top-10 general news stories, but it did finish as the seventh-most popular talk show subject.

That was in part thanks to liberal radio host Randi Rhodes’ lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of the ambiguous ending on her June 11 program. The same night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews mulled over the socio-political ramifications of the famous final scene with NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd and Linda Douglass of the National Journal.

“That family having dinner at that restaurant, eating onion rings together, the kid who’s a pain in the butt, the daughter that can’t parallel park,” observed Matthews. “It’s so American.”

Just ahead of the Sopranos as a talk topic was the increasing hostility between the U.S. and Iran (sixth-biggest story at 3%). Much of the speculation there focused on Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman’s comments on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the U.S. has “got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.”

The connection between the situation in Iran and events in Iraq was made clear on the June 13 edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” show when the guest, NBC’s Tim Russert, was asked to comment about Lieberman’s words of warning about Iraq. Russert said he had run the idea of military action against Iran past people in the Pentagon and they had two reactions. One “concern was, ‘do we know the right targets?’” and a second more ominous one was “if we did that and Iran suddenly decided they were going to send a couple of hundred thousand troops into Iraq, what happens to our folks in Iraq?”

Russert was a busy cable talk guest. He also appeared last week on Tucker Carlson’s June 15 MSNBC program to offer a perspective on the immigration debate, but he eschewed the fiery moral passion of many hosts for the cold political calculus. Appearing to be anti-immigration or anti-Hispanic, he suggested, might not be in the best interests of the White House and Republicans.

“If you look at the demographics, the Republicans need Hispanic voters in order to maintain majority status,” he said. And he added that White House advisors may well be thinking that “if we have Hispanics and blacks voting ten-to-one Democratic, we’re in trouble.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Immigration - 17%

2. 2008 Campaign - 15%

3. Iraq Policy Debate - 8%

4. Fired US Attorneys - 5%

5. Events in Iraq - 4%

6. Iran - 3%

7. Sopranos - 3%

8. Palestinian Conflict - 3%

9. US Domestic Terrorism - 2%

10. Libby Sentence - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Immigration - 10%

2. Palestinian Conflict - 9%

3. Events in Iraq - 7%

4. 2008 Campaign - 7%

5. Fired US Attorneys - 3%

6. Iraq Policy Debate - 3%

7. US Domestic Terrorism - 2%

8. Space Station - 2%

9. Iran - 2%

10. Libby Sentence - 2%

Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.

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“In Washington, a dramatic reversal today,” declared ABC evening news anchor Charles Gibson June 15. “One of the president’s top domestic priorities, immigration reform, suddenly has new life after being left for dead just last week.”

The latest twist in a month-long political war over immigration came after President Bush went to Capitol Hill to resurrect a measure that appeared doomed just one week before when Senate backers were unable to bring it to a vote. (The Boston Globe reported that Bush’s June 12 visit to Congress included his first lunch meeting with Senate Republicans in five years.)

The changing arc of the immigration debate helped make it the biggest story the week of June 10-15, filling 10% of the overall newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (It was the leading subject in the cable (15%) and radio (11%) sectors.) The week marked the first time in 2007 that immigration was a No. 1 story.

For much of the year, immigration was a backburner subject. But since Senators worked out a compromise bill on May 17, the topic has finished among the top-five stories each week. That was in part thanks to the bill triggering an outpouring of heated opposition from talk show hosts such as radio’s Rush Limbaugh and CNN’s Lou Dobbs. (From May 13-June 15, immigration was the second-biggest story overall, trailing only the 2008 presidential race.)

The passions stirred by this issue were on display during a June 14 debate on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” between commentators Michelle Malkin and Geraldo Rivera. Malkin, a supporter of tough enforcement against undocumented or illegal aliens, declared that Rivera “suffers from open-border narcissism on this issue.”

Rivera responded that Malkin’s goal is “population transfer. She wants to turn every neighbor into…a snitch, a rat.”

And that was one of the more polite exchanges between the two.

The second-biggest story behind the immigration furor last week was the quasi-civil war in the Palestinian territories that pitted the Islamist Hamas faction against the Western- backed Fatah forces. The story filled 9% of the overall newshole as defined by our Index and was the No. 1 story in the newspaper (9%), online (19%), network TV (11%) sectors. Newshole in the Index is the total time on television and radio and column inches in print and online news outlets.

The intra-Palestinian strife was but one of four top-10 stories connected to the spiraling violence in the Middle East. Bloodshed on the ground in Iraq was the third-biggest story (7%), while the policy debate over the war (3%) was the sixth-biggest story. Simmering tensions between the U.S. and Iran was the number nine story at 2%.

Immigration was the leading domestic story last week, but not the only one to make the top-10 list. The 2008 race for the White House, even in a relatively slow week, was the fourth biggest topic at 7%. A failed no-confidence vote against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales—as well as Congressional subpoenas for former White House staffers Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor—drove coverage of the U.S. attorneys scandal to become fifth-biggest story of the week (at 3%). And the news that former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby could not delay his jail sentence while he appeals the verdict in the Valerie Plame leak case was the tenth leading story at 2%

In a week also marked by a fatal bomb attack on a Lebanese legislator, the news out of the Mideast was discouragingly bloody.

That led to a host of reportage that seems all too depressingly familiar. “Tonight the Middle East exploding in violence from Beirut to Gaza to Iraq,” is how Lou Dobbs opened his June 13 cable program, as he wondered whether “a regional war could be at hand.”

An analysis in the June 15 Los Angeles Times noted that, “The violence has dimmed hopes that Palestinians and Israelis might someday reach an agreement for side-by-side nations and raised questions over how Israel responds to having Hamas, which calls for the Jewish state’s destruction, indisputably in charge in Gaza.”

Hamas’s seizure of Gaza, followed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s move to exile Hamas from the government, seemed to turn the quest for a two-state solution (Israel and the Palestinians) into a three-state problem: Israel, Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza.

In Iraq, the biggest news coming last week was the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra, the second attack on that facility in about 16 months. The first bombing, back in February 2006, is widely viewed as having been responsible for triggering a bloody wave of sectarian violence in that country.

In some ways, the bitter internal U.S. debate over Iraq has been in a holding pattern since May 24 when Congress voted to continue funding the war but did not include timetables for withdrawal of the troops. The key players seem to be biding their time in advance of the widely anticipated September “surge” status report by General David Patraeus.

But on Dobbs’s June 13 show, CNN correspondent Ed Henry reported on press secretary Tony Snow’s remarks casting some doubt on whether the September report would be a “pivotal moment.”

“After weeks of the White House promising a major September progress report on the increase of U.S. troops in Iraq, spokesman Tony Snow is trying to dial that back,” Henry suggested while the caption on the screen read “Change in Iraq Policy?”

Among the developments driving coverage of the conflict between Washington and Tehran were allegations by the U.S. government last week of “irrefutable evidence” that Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. Until now, the Sunni-based Taliban and the Shiite-based Iranian government have been considered fierce foes. A Taliban-Tehran alliance would represent an anti-U.S. marriage of convenience.

Two subjects with less serious implications started out among the top 10-stories and dropped off the list as the week went on. Although her brief release and abrupt re-incarceration turned socialite Paris Hilton’s jail saga into a top-five story during the week of June 3-8, the heiress’s life behind bars generated only 1% of the coverage last week.

When it came to cultural buzz, far more attention was lavished on another criminal, New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano. According to the coverage, the much-debated closing scene in the June 10 final episode of the HBO series “The Sopranos” was either a) uniquely brilliant in the annals of television, or b) an inexcusable and infuriating copout.

The raging argument was over whether creator David Chase wanted viewers to believe his brutal but endearing protagonist Tony Soprano got whacked or went with his life in a final scene halted by an abrupt 10-second screen blackout. How big a deal was this? All three major network newscasts June 11 ran stories on the controversy.

NBC anchor Brian Williams summed up the message of the finale thusly: “In other words, come up with your own ending.”

Early in the week, as the mainstream media digested the last episode, the Sopranos’ last show was actually the fourth-biggest story in the Index. But as time went on and much of the debate seemed to migrate to the blogosphere, the subject plummeted all the way to…

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: Due to a technical error, the Friday morning radio news headlines from ABC news radio and CBS news radio were not included in this week's sample.

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On June 8—the day after the immigration bill suffered a major defeat when its backers failed to get a Senate vote—there was barely disguised gloating on the part of some talk hosts.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs, a staunch opponent of the bill who has spent more time on immigration than any other host, opened his program by announcing “a crushing defeat for the pro-illegal alien lobby in its efforts to ram amnesty through the U.S. Senate in defiance of the will of the American people.”

Substituting for Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talker Roger Hedgecock told his listeners that this was a case of “everyone on the talk show circuit...talking about this issue in a way that has educated a larger percentage of Americans to what’s really at stake than the Senate is used to.”

On the same day, radio host Michael Savage, another fierce opponent of the measure, responded to the criticism that extremist hosts had conspired to defeat the bill by quoting conservative icon Barry Goldwater.

“As a great American once said, ‘extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.’”

Last week, as the compromise immigration bill collapsed, the issue was the second most popular topic among radio and cable talk shows. According to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for June 3-8, the immigration debate filled 19% of the total talk airtime. Although supporters hope that an amended version of the measure will make it back to the Senate floor, many media accounts credited a sustained and aggressive talk show attack as a factor in the outcome.

The most popular talk topic last week, at 26%, was the 2008 Presidential race, a story driven in part by CNN-hosted debates for both the Democratic and Republican candidates. (The campaign and the immigration battle were also the two top stories, at 15% and 9% respectively, in the week’s general News Index.)

Two jail tales filled the third and fourth spots on the talk roster. The 30-month sentence handed to former vice-presidential aide “Scooter” Libby for his role in the Valerie Plame case consumed 9% of the talk airtime. And party girl Paris Hilton’s brief release and quick return to jail to serve her sentence for violating probation was the fourth leading story, also at 9%.

The debate over Iraq policy—a subject that has cooled somewhat since the May 24 Congressional vote funding the war without withdrawal timetables—was the fifth biggest subject at 4%. That vote was widely seen as a victory for President Bush after a five-month battle with Congress over war strategy.

The best way to get a sense of how the immigration debate galvanized some talk hosts is to return back to the week of the May 17, when the Senate compromise endorsed by the White House was announced.

In the period from May 13 through June 8, the immigration debate was the second-most popular talk topic (18%), narrowly trailing the presidential race (21%) and doubling the time spent on the next biggest subject, the Iraq policy debate (9%).

But while the amount of time devoted to the subject is telling, equally revealing is the question of who talked about it. In that 26-day period, the airwaves were dominated by vocal hosts opposed to the legislation who often referred to it with the politically damning term “amnesty bill.”

On his nightly CNN show, Dobbs aired more than 40% of all the May 13-June 8 talk show segments that primarily dealt with immigration, according to the Index. Conservatives Sean Hannity (on his syndicated radio show and his Fox News Channel program) and Limbaugh each initiated about 15% of all the immigration segments in that period. Another fierce critic who frequently spoke out was Savage, who described the measure as threatening “the sovereignty of America” and compared the opponents to defenders of the Alamo.

While the immigration compromise had critics on both the left and right, it generally had more support among Democrats than Republicans. Yet, there was hardly a peep from the liberal talk hosts including MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and talk radio’s Randi Rhodes and Ed Schultz. (When he did weigh in on June 8, Schultz expressed satisfaction that the bill failed.)

Given the intensity of the battle waged by the talk show critics, it’s not surprising that the media analysis—whether positive or negative—cited their role in the outcome.

A CNN story on the immigration issue began with the sound of a Limbaugh attack on the bill blaring through a car radio. A June 10 front-page New York Times article on grassroots opposition said the measure “sparked a furious rebellion among many Republican and even some Democratic voters, who were linked by the Internet and encouraged by radio talk shows.” And a June 7 dispatch from Reuters noted the bitter opposition from “very vocal groups ranging from civilian border patrol activists to talk show radio hosts shouting down the plan on syndicated shows.”

“Amnesty’s defeat is the big deal,” declared Savage on June 8. “When this story is finally written, it’s the victory of the people.” It may also represent the clearest case this year of an energized talk show culture having an impact on public policy.

A more traditional role for the talk hosts—arguing an issue from opposing ideological poles—was at play in the “Scooter” Libby sentencing. Libby was convicted of obstruction and perjury in a case that revolved around the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, but was more broadly seen as a window into the Bush administration’s strategy in the run-up to the Iraq war.

On his June 5 radio program, an angry Hannity said the sentence given to Vice President Cheney’s key aide was “an outrage…the fact that he is going to jail on such a bogus case…it annoys me to no end that the often Republicans refuse to fight fire with fire.”

On the same day, Rhodes was clearly heartened by Libby’s fate, telling her listeners that his sentence of “30 months is about a minute and a half for every lie he told. I love that.”

The strange saga of Paris Hilton—which included live cable coverage of the handcuffed heiress being taken back to court in a sheriff’s vehicle—was the fourth biggest talk topic at 9%. That’s a lot of attention to a tabloid celebrity saga, but not as much as the 15% of the talk airtime consumed by the death of Anna Nicole Smith in early February.

Some of the hosts turned their fire on the media for giving too much attention to what they considered a frivolous story. A more tongue-in-cheek approach was taken by MSNBC’s Olbermann who staged something called “Countdown Puppet Theater: Paris in the Courtroom” on his June 8 show. That brief segment included crude puppet-like caricatures of a sobbing Hilton appearing before the judge who summarily sent her back to prison.

In what was mostly a sarcastic effort to discuss the broader implications of the Hilton case with the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, Olbermann’s last question may have come closest to the truth.

“This is our guilty pleasure, isn’t it, covering this story?”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. 2008 Campaign - 26%

2. Immigration - 19%

3. Libby Sentence - 9%

4. Paris Hilton - 9%

5. Iraq Policy Debate - 4%

6. Terrorist Plot Against JFK Airport - 3%

7. Congressional Corruption - 2%

8. Events in Iraq - 2%

9. War on Terror General - 2%

10. US/Russia Relations - 1%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. 2008 Campaign - 15%

2. Immigration - 9%

3. US/Russia Relations - 7%

4. Libby Setence - 5%

5. Paris Hilton - 4%

6. Events in Iraq - 4%

7. Congressional Corruption - 3%

8. US Domestic Terrorism - 3%

9. G-8 Summit - 3%

10. Terrorist Plot Against JFK Airport - 3%

Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.

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It was shortly after one p.m. eastern time on Friday June 8 when cable viewers witnessed a scene that was part paparazzi, part “Cops,” and part “Entertainment Tonight.”

A handcuffed Paris Hilton was deposited into sheriff’s car #865 for a trip back to court where Judge Michael Sauer would send her back to jail after her sudden and early release the day before. The spectacle of cameras trained on the car winding its way slowly through the Los Angeles streets was, in a way, strangely reminiscent of O.J. Simpson’s slow-speed car chase 13 years earlier.

Hilton managed to evade the waiting press hordes on her return to the courthouse, but that did not chill their ardor. “The media frenzy is wild,” declared CNN’s entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas.

Paris Hilton’s problems represented only the second celebrity tabloid tale this year—the first being Anna Nicole Smith’s death—to make the roster of top five stories, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from June 3-8. The saga of socialite/party girl Hilton’s release and return to prison after serving a few days of what was to have been a 23-day sentence for violating drunk driving probation was the fifth biggest story of the week, filling 4% of the newshole.

The Hilton tale was covered most heavily in cable (third biggest story at 9%) and on radio (fourth story at 7%). And the bulk of the attention came late in the week. For the two days of June 7 and 8, Hilton generated 10% of the overall coverage, filling 18% of the radio and 21% of the cable airtime.

Cable’s attraction to the story was clearly illustrated by MSNBC on June 8. Declaring “here’s Paris Hilton now,” anchor Contessa Brewer abruptly cut away from a discussion of the retirement of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace to the scene at Hilton’s home as she prepared for her ride back to court.

Hilton’s legal drama occurred on a very crowded news week. Fueled by coverage of two major debates, the 2008 Presidential race was the top story (15%) leading in the newspaper (9%), network TV (11%), cable (25%) and radio (15%) sectors. The legislative setback to the compromise Senate immigration measure was the second leading story of the week, filling 9% of the newshole. The prospect of a new Cold War, triggered by U.S.-Russian tensions over American plans to install a missile defense system in Europe, was the third biggest story at 7%. (It also accounted for 20% of all the coverage in the online sector.)

Both parties were tainted by scandal last week. The sentencing of former Dick Cheney aide “Scooter” Libby to 30 months in jail for perjury and obstruction of justice in the case involving CIA operative Valerie Plame was the fourth biggest story (5%). And the indictment of Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson on racketeering, bribery and money laundering charges helped make Congressional corruption scandals the seventh story at 3%.

Two terrorism stories—one that represented a victory for the Bush administration’s strategy and one that represented a defeat—also made the top-10 list last week. The successful breakup of a plot to attack JFK Airport was the tenth biggest story at 3%. And rulings by military judges who threw out cases against two U.S. terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay was a major part the eighth biggest story on domestic terrorism (also at 3%). The only story about Iraq to make the top-10 list—events on the ground there—finished sixth at 4%.

Aside from the CNN-hosted Republican and Democratic debates last week, another major story line was the June 4 forum at which Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards gathered to discuss their faith. Talking about religion and mixing faith and public policy has traditionally been a somewhat tricky issue for Democrats. But on ABC’s June 5 edition of “Good Morning America,” correspondent Dan Harris reported that “some Democrats think they are now in a position to close the so-called ‘God Gap.’”

On the Republican side, the issue of who isn’t yet in the 2008 race continues to loom large in the coverage. The June 4 edition of MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” featured a “Fox News Sunday” interview in which possible candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused the government of “not functioning…not getting the job done.”

In a June 5 interview on Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” former Senator Fred Thompson—who recently announced the formation of a preliminary campaign committee—said he had never really been focused on the White House, but “more and more, I wish that I had the opportunity to do the things that only a President can do.”

For the fourth straight week, the immigration debate—driven by the May 17 compromise that inspired attacks from both the left and the right—was one of the top five stories in the Index. During that time a number of talk hosts, from CNN’s Lou Dobbs to radio talker Rush Limbaugh, engaged in an energetic and aggressive campaign against the bill. By week’s end, they appeared to have been on the victorious side as the bill was pulled from the floor after supporters were unable to bring it to a vote.

The front-page of the June 8 USA Today carried a headline that declared, “Immigration bill not dead yet, backers say.” But the tone of the article was a little more skeptical, noting that the “Senate’s failure to complete the bill now raises questions about whether Congress can deal with the contentious issue with a presidential campaign in gear.”

Coverage of the apparently growing tensions between the U.S. and Russia—and between George Bush and Vladimir Putin—dominated much of the week’s coverage. But the story took something of a surprise twist when, during a private meeting at the G-8 Summit, the Russian leader offered to accept the controversial missile defense system in the ex-Soviet republic, Azerbaijan.

While acknowledging “serious diplomatic and technical challenges ahead,” the New York Times June 8 page-one story reported that the Putin offer and Bush’s willingness to consider it reflected a “desire on both sides to cool the hostile exchanges that in recent months had driven relations to a low point in the post-cold-war era.”

Yet with all the weighty events of the week, Paris Hilton still managed to command 8% of the network coverage on June 7 and 8 as she bounced between a jail cell and her LA home. What had started as a celebrity story about someone with a penchant for publicity and legal trouble had suddenly turned into a morality tale about double standards in the criminal justice system.

On the June 7 CBS nightly newscast, correspondent Bill Whitaker reported that “a fed-up public is going ballistic” after learning of Hilton’s medical release after only three days in jail. (The Hilton story made all three major network newscasts). Noting that Al Sharpton was among those adding his voice to protest this “celebrity injustice,” Whitaker declared that “from the blogosphere to the legal sphere, criticism of Paris is burning.”

One day later, with the media hot on her trail, a weepy and distraught Hilton was sent back to her cell.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: On both Monday and Friday evenings, CNN aired a special program on presidential candidates and their faith. CNN also aired a 2-hour debate on the evening of Tuesday, June 5. We did not include any of these programs in this week's sample, although we did include some of CNN's coverage before and after the Tuesday night debate.

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It’s not surprising that Andrew Speaker, (aka the “TB Traveler”) was the biggest story in the mainstream media generally last week. The tale of the Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous disease potentially putting others at risk during an overseas honeymoon touched on all sorts of issues—including homeland security, the methods of the Center for Disease Control, and the fact that the infected man’s father-in-law was a TB researcher.

But despite all those angles, cable and radio talk hosts were unenthusiastic about the subject. While the story accounted for 12% of all the coverage in the general News Index last week, it filled only half that (6%) of the talk airtime, ranking it as the fourth biggest topic, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from May 27-June 1.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs, and the Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Alan Colmes spent some time talking about Speaker’s travels. But none of the MSNBC talk hosts examined by PEJ broached the subject. And on talk radio, only Michael Savage managed to work up a head of steam in the hours examined.

When hosts did weigh in, they tended to focus on one basic angle—personal responsibility and accountability.

“I’ve given him the name ‘TB Andy’ in honor of ‘Typhoid Mary’…Should ‘TB Andy’ be charged with a crime?” Savage asked on his May 31 show. “Ultimately, I think you blame ‘TB Andy.’”

Blame was also the operative term on the June 1 edition of “Hannity & Colmes” when Hannity bluntly asked his guests who was to “blame” for the public health scare, Speaker or the CDC?

That same evening, O’Reilly told viewers that Speaker “put his own needs above those of other people.” And on the question of “should we give Mr. Speaker the benefit of the doubt?” O’Reilly answered with a definite “no.”

If nothing else, the treatment of this subject suggests the talk culture’s tendency to boil complex subjects down to morality tales about right and wrong, good and bad.

That also appears to be the case with the talk shows’ handling of the immigration policy debate, which was the third biggest top topic (10%) last week. Ever since the announcement of the May 17 Senate immigration bill compromise, a number of hosts have launched a virtual jihad against the measure, one that continued last week.

On his March 30 MSNBC show, Tucker Carlson made a unique argument about the country that’s responsible for much of the illegal immigration to the U.S. He pointed out that Miss USA in the Miss Universe Pageant had recently been booed by the audience in Mexico City and that a few years ago, a crowd at a U.S.-Mexico soccer game a few years “chanted Osama” at the Americans.

“You’ve got the right to hate the U.S. of course…” said Carlson. “But we in the U.S. also have the right to prevent you from coming here if you hate us. Don’t we have that right?”

The two talk topics that finished ahead of the immigration controversy last week were the Iraq policy debate (second at 11%) and the 2008 Presidential race (the top story at 21%). Two other aspects of the Iraq war also made the top-10 list including the impact on the homefront (5%) and events on the ground (4%).

For the second week in a row, Rosie O’Donnell, and her contentious history on the daytime television show “The View” was a major talk topic, finishing seventh at 3%. That was followed by news of the resignation of White House counselor Dan Bartlett, (eighth at 3%), the new Democratic Congress (2%), and the Memorial Day talks between the U.S. and Iran (2%).

Ever since the 2008 Presidential race kicked into gear in January with crucial announcements by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the subject has been a staple of the talk show culture. And it has finished in the top-five story list in 18 out of the last 20 weeks. Typically, the talk shows give the subject proportionately more play than the general news outlets, and that was the case last week: the race filled more than one-fifth of the talk airtime studied compared to less than one-tenth (9%) of the general newshole.

Last week that talk included a controversy over several rap artists involved with Hillary Clinton fundraisers, closer scrutiny of Michelle Obama, the wife of the Democratic candidate, and plenty of speculation about how the widely expected entrance of actor and former Senator Fred Thompson might reshape the GOP race.

Yet even if it was not the biggest story in talk, little seemed to evoke more passion than the subject of outspoken war opponent Rosie O’Donnell—who announced her early exit from “the View” after a nasty May 23 on-air argument with Elisabeth Hasselbeck—particularly for critics like Hannity and O’Reilly.

On another part of the spectrum, Chris Matthews, host of the Beltway-oriented “Hardball” on MSNBC, wondered if the liberal O’Donnell was becoming a major player in politics. His guests, however, seemed to be skeptical about that.

Some provocative ideas apparently cannot fly even in the talk culture.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. 2008 Campaign - 21%

2. Iraq Policy Debate - 11%

3. Immigration - 10%

4. Tuberculosis Traveler - 6%

5. Iraq Homefront - 5%

6. Events in Iraq - 4%

7. Rosie O'Donnell - 3%

8. Dan Bartlett Resigns - 3%

9. Congress - 2%

10. Iran - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Tuberculosis Traveler - 12%

2. 2008 Campaign - 9%

3. Events in Iraq - 7%

4. Iraq Homefront - 4%

5. Immigration - 4%

6. Iran - 4%

7. Iraq Policy Debate - 4%

8. Global Warming - 2%

9. Sudan/Darfur - 2%

10. Afghanistan - 1%

Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.

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During a televised press conference on May 29, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Dr. Julie Gerberding informed the nation that a man carrying a very dangerous form of drug-resistant tuberculosis may have infected passengers aboard several cross-Atlantic flights in May.

Because this “organism is so potentially serious…a federal order of isolation” had been issued for the unnamed infected man, Gerberding explained. It was the first such federal action, she added, in more than 40 years.

Only three days later, on June 1, that mystery man—also known as “Patient Zero”—gave an exclusive interview to Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Wearing a white mask over his mouth, Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer confined to a Denver hospital, had a message for those who accused him of being a modern day Typhoid Mary.

“I’m very sorry for any grief or pain that I’ve caused anyone,” he said. “I really believed that I wasn’t putting people at risk. [Doctors] told me I wasn’t contagious, I wasn’t dangerous.”

Speaker’s overseas odyssey struck a number of sensitive and critical chords last week. (One doctor told ABC News it was a scenario that “could have been written by Shakespeare.”) It triggered a global public health scare, placed the CDC at the center of a controversy, raised questions about terrorism preparedness and border security, and touched on the basic issue of personal accountability and morality.

Not surprisingly, the case turned out to be the biggest story of the week, filling 12% of the newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from May 27-June 1. The TB saga was a top five story in all five media sectors, but it was primarily a television phenomenon. It was the top story in both network (16%) and cable TV (24%), although CNN’s prime-time lineup devoted far more time to the subject than Fox’s. And MSNBC’s cable talk lineup virtually ignored the story.

The 2008 Presidential race—the second biggest overall story last week (9%)—was the top event in the newspaper (8%) and radio (15%) sectors. Two major story lines were Republican Fred Thompson inching closer to a formal candidacy and the impact two new books about Hillary Clinton might have on the course of her campaign.

The third biggest story was the situation inside Iraq (7%). But when you add that category together with the impact of the war at home (fourth biggest story at 4%) and the policy debate (seventh biggest story 4%), Iraq combined to account for 15% of all of last week’s coverage.

The continuing debate over immigration policy was the fifth biggest overall subject at 4%. And it was the second leading story on radio where conservative talk hosts continue to hammer away at the May 17 compromise legislation.

Coverage of the sixth biggest story, the conflict with Iran (4%) started off on a mildly optimistic note with news of the May 28 direct talks between Washington and Tehran on the situation in Iraq. But by the end of the week, tensions again ratcheted up as the U.S. issued warnings to Iran’s government about four detained Iranian-Americans and the continuation of its nuclear enrichment program.

From the moment the news about the TB flight scare broke on May 29, events moved at a brisk pace with new angles regularly revealing themselves. On her May 30 show, CNN’s Paula Zahn interviewed homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve about how the infected lawyer managed to elude authorities in an era when there are serious concerns about everything from bioterrorism to a bird flu pandemic.

“It’s incredibly frightening and embarrassing,” said Zahn. “What if this had been smallpox?”

By May 31, the media reported on another new and surprising wrinkle in the tale. It was learned that Speaker’s new father-in-law, Dr. Robert Cooksey, works as a tuberculosis researcher for the CDC.

NBC’s Brian Williams led his newscast with what he called “a huge twist” in a story that has become “an even more bizarre tale tonight.” The report included footage of Cooksey—who denied having anything to do with Speaker’s infection—issuing a statement warning the media “not to hype this because it is a very complicated situation.”

The next morning, as Speaker emerged from the shadows in his interview with Sawyer, the New York Times published a front-page story describing how the tuberculosis victim managed to cross back into the U.S. from Canada by car despite the warning that had been issued to border agents.

By Friday evening, the story had evolved to the point where the blame game was in full swing. On his June 1 Fox News Channel show, Sean Hannity put it bluntly.

“So who’s to blame for the fiasco, the Speakers or the CDC?” Hannity said. “He was repeatedly told that that he was not infectious…I blame the CDC.”

For her part, Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl took a different view, calling Speaker “reckless” and criticizing him for “sneak[ing] into this country.”

If nothing else, this complex saga also says something about television’s growing power as a witness box in the court of public opinion. Not too long ago, one could envision someone like Speaker—who says he’s received considerable hate mail—lying low until media and public interest died down. Not only did he choose to tell his story to ABC’s Sawyer last week. This week, he’s scheduled to chat with the primary practitioner of prime-time schmooze, CNN’s Larry King.

Even as the media seemed preoccupied with Speaker’s story last week, there were several significant events driving coverage of the war in Iraq. The situation on the ground inside Iraq was punctuated by several sobering milestones. After a bloody Memorial Day on which 10 U.S. troops were killed, May 2007 became the third deadliest month in the four-year-old war for American military personnel.

One of the stories fueling interest in the war on the homefront was the announcement by anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan that she was stepping away from the movement, at least temporarily. In a May 29 interview with liberal radio talk host Ed Schultz, Sheehan said she had been deeply “affected” by the May 24 Congressional vote to continue funding the war without troop withdrawal timetables. It’s “time to reevaluate the direction we’re going in,” she told Schultz. “Obviously, the direction we’re going has stopped being effective.”

Coverage of the Iraq policy debate featured a number of issues including a May 30 report on CNN’s “Situation Room” that the administration might be considering a lengthy, perhaps decades-long, troop presence in Iraq. Host Wolf Blitzer stated that the White House was “raising eyebrows” by citing “the U.S. presence in South Korea as a possible model for the future of the U.S. mission in Iraq.” Blitzer pointed out that there are currently 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, a remnant of a war that ended more than five decades ago.

Several initiatives by President Bush became major news events last week. The ninth biggest story (at 2%) was triggered by the President’s announcement of additional sanctions designed to get the Sudanese government to halt the violence in Darfur. The eighth biggest story (global warming at 2%) was largely a reaction to Bush’s decision, in advance of this week’s G-8 Summit, to call for an international effort to reduce greenhouse gases.

The President’s move triggered a fairly lively media debate about whether the U.S. is now seriously embracing some of the more aggressive environmental policies of many of its allies. A June 1 story in the Austin American-Statesman reported on the administration’s greenhouse gas initiative, but also published critics’ complaints that the President is “ignoring other international efforts on climate change that are already under way and is trying to avoid taking action until he leaves office.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: MSNBC did not run any of its normal programming on Monday, May 28, due to the Memorial Day holiday. Therefore, we did not include any of MSNBC's Monday shows in this week's sample.

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One of the things that the talk show culture seems to appreciate is a good fight—particularly one with ideological implications.

Last week, two of the top-10 stories on the cable and radio talk shows involved high-profile dustups, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for May 20—25. The shoutfest on ABC’s “The View” between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck turned out to be the fourth biggest story (filling 5% of the airtime). Of lower volume but arguably more significance, the fallout from former President Jimmy Carter’s assertion that George W. Bush’s administration was “the worst in history” ended up he 7th most popular topic (3%).”

Neither of those incidents, by contrast, were major events in PEJ’s general News Coverage Index, finishing well out of the top-10 story list. But they both had a key element that apparently proved irresistible to some of the ideologically driven talk shows. They pitted a liberal (O’Donnell and Carter) against a conservative (Hasselbeck and Bush).

In the nasty May 23 “View” battle, O’Donnell—an outspoken critic of the Iraq war—felt her co-star had not adequately defended her from allegations that O’Donnell had equated U.S. troops in Iraq with terrorists. Hasselbeck fought back. The talk referees stepped in quickly with their score cards.

“Rosie O’Donnell…is an ill-informed bitter woman who was allowed by ABC-Disney to parade her absurd view of the world in front of ‘The View’ audience,” declared Bill O’Reilly on his Fox News Channel show.

While the “Rocky” theme song played in the background, MSNBC’s Dan Abrams described the fight as a “pay-per-view Smackdown” between O’Donnell and “her conservative arch-enemy” Hasselbeck. “The winner in a split decision,” Abram declared, “Elisabeth.”

The Carter-Bush tiff began when the former President was quoted in the May 19 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette calling Bush’s tenure “the worst in history” in global affairs. A Bush spokesman responded by calling Carter “increasingly irrelevant.” Carter later acknowledged his words were either “careless or misinterpreted.” But the gauntlet had been tossed and the talk shows weighed in.

On MSNBC’s “Countdown” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter said reaction to this spat was “one of those Red State-Blue State things”—meaning that Bush supporters would object to Carter’s words while critics would applaud. But Alter did criticize Carter for retreating, asserting that having uttered the “worst in history” remark, “he just should have stuck with it.”

Over on Fox, presidential historian Richard Shenkman faulted Carter for his initial criticism of Bush, saying he “messed up. He did break an unwritten rule…Once [former presidents] are out of the White House, we don’t expect them to be politicians anymore.”

There were other kinds of battles—less personal and direct—that topped the talk show roster last week. The passions stirred by the new compromise immigration measure helped make that subject the most popular talk topic, filling 24% of the time in PEJ’s index. (It was, incidentally, the second biggest story in the news media generally last week, at 10%). That was followed by the debate over Iraq policy (15%), and the 2008 contest for the White House (13%).

The fifth biggest story (5%), a survey of the attitudes of Muslim Americans by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (a sister organization of PEJ), was of particular interest to some conservative radio hosts.

For the second week in a row, opponents of the compromise immigration measure used the talk show microphones to assail that agreement from a variety of angles. More and more, some hosts appear to be trying to launch a full blown airwave crusade to stop the legislation.

About half of all talk segments on the immigration debate last week were aired on a single program, Lou Dobbs’s CNN show. Dobbs, the most vocal of all the hosts on the immigration issue, tends to describe the compromise plan with the politically loaded term—“amnesty.”

Much of the conversation about Iraq policy revolved around the crucial May 24 Congressional vote that funded the war but did not include withdrawal timelines. That was widely portrayed in the media as a political victory—perhaps temporary—for the President. And the sense of disappointment from liberal talkers was palpable.

In a scathing commentary, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann accused the Democrats in Congress of “betrayal” and “surrender” to the White House. “The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans,” he declared.

In an interview with Senator Edward Kennedy, who voted against the funding measure, liberal radio host Ed Schultz said “there’s a lot of Democrats [who] think the Democratic leadership let down the base and that 80 votes for this failed policy in the Senate was way too many.”

One issue that particularly seemed to galvanize conservatives was the release of a Pew Research Center survey headlined “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.” A number of the findings indicated that many Muslims in this country are assimilated and moderate. But some hosts seized on the fact that 26% of Muslim Americans under 30 said suicide bombing was “often,” “sometimes” or “rarely” justified to portray the results as ominous.

Criticizing much of the mainstream media for playing up the more reassuring aspects of the poll, Rush Limbaugh declared on his May 23 show that “Islam has made American Muslim residents more extreme….Wealth and education and opportunity and freedom have done nothing to moderate them.”

On his radio program that same day, Michael Savage in discussing the survey asserted that “we have a time bomb ticking in the United States of America—young Muslims. Twenty-six percent of them back killings.”

Thus Savage phrased his question for listeners this way: “What should the government do to protect us from the 26% of Muslim youth who approve of suicide bombings?”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Immigration - 24%

2. Iraq Policy Debate - 15%

3. 2008 Campaign - 13%

4. Rosie O'Donnell - 5%

5. Pew Research Report on Muslim Americans - 5%

6. Fired US Attorney Scandal - 4%

7. Jimmy Carter's Comments about Bush - 3%

8. Iran - 3%

9. Gas/Oil Prices - 2%

10. Events in Iraq - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Iraq Policy Debate - 10%

2. Immigration - 10%

3. Events in Iraq - 9%

4. Lebanon Violence - 6%

5. 2008 Campaign - 6%

6. Gas/Oil Prices - 4%

7. Fired US Attorney Scandal - 4%

8. Iran - 3%

9. Pew Research Report on Muslim Americans - 2%

10. Iraq Homefront - 2%

Click here to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index.

Primary links

News Index

Note: Due to a technical error, the Friday morning radio news headlines from ABC news radio and CBS news radio were not included in this week's sample.

Note: MSNBC did not run any of its normal programming on Monday, May 28, due to the Memorial Day holiday. Therefore, we did not include any of MSNBC's Monday shows in this week's sample.