News Index

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

Back on January 9, in PEJ’s inaugural News Coverage Index, the biggest story was the swearing in of the new Democratic Congress with the first female House Speaker in U.S. history.

But a week later, the debate over President Bush’s new Iraq “surge” policy emerged as the dominant news subject. And by late January, the new legislature had disappeared from the list of 10 most covered stories.

But even if the new Congress has largely vanished as a subject, the shift in control of the legislative machinery has had a major impact on the news agenda. The reason was succinctly explained in this March 18 David Broder column: “Ten weeks into the new Congress, it is clear that revelation, not legislation, is going to be its real product,” he wrote. “Democrats find it easier to investigate than legislate.”

That was certainly borne out in the media last week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for March 11 to 16. Four of the top 10 stories were fueled by the new-found investigative power of Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The top story—the spiraling scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys (filling 16% of the newshole)—has been driven by Congressional hearings and further threats of subpoenas. The fifth biggest story—the Iraq war at home, which includes the continuing Walter Reed Hospital fallout (4%)—was given dramatic impetus by the impassioned Congressional testimony of vets and their loved ones. Former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s March 16 Capitol Hill testimony became last week’s ninth biggest story (at 2%).

And the battle over Iraq strategy (third place at 7%) is deeply intertwined with attempts by the Congress—which has already taken testimony from top defense officials—to roll back Bush’s surge strategy.

Added together, the four stories in which the new Congress played a significant role accounted for 29% of the overall coverage last week. That doesn’t include the second-biggest story—the 2008 Presidential race (at 9%)—which does happen to feature a number of legislators on both sides of the aisle. In the meantime, two other major stories last week offered, alternately, good and bad news for the current Oval Office occupant. The fourth biggest story (domestic terrorism at 6%), was fueled by revelations that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had confessed to planning a number of major attacks, a fresh reminder of the terrorist threat that is at the heart of Bush’s foreign policy. Conversely, the President’s trip to Latin American (seventh story at 3%) was marred by violent protests that shadowed him and dictated the tone of coverage.

While there were some differences in the top five stories in each media sector, the U.S. attorneys investigation was the most covered subject online (22%), on network TV (20%), cable TV (17%) and radio (15%). Only the front-page newspaper coverage reflected different news judgment as it devoted the most space (11%) to the 2008 Presidential race.

The top story last week, the controversy over the alleged firing of U.S. attorneys on political grounds, appeared to explode on the scene. It jumped to 16% of the coverage from 2% in the previous Index. But it was actually a slow-simmering story (or a “tale that congealed in slow motion” as the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz wrote). The story was pieced together over several months from local papers with a blog playing the role of clearing house, reporter, and dot connector—in this case liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.

One memorable moment was fired prosecutor David Iglesias’s March 6 Congressional testimony that he “felt sick” after getting a phone call from Senator Pete Domenici asking about the timing of indictments in a corruption case.

What propelled the story last week were two things the national media thrive on—the release of juicy emails in response to Congressional pressure and an administration official who made himself available in a charm offensive designed to try and defuse the crisis and perhaps save his job.

On March 13, a beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales publicly admitted to mistakes in how the issue was handled, but declined to offer his resignation. The next morning, his media tour took him to the “Today” show. While insisting that “the firings were not politically motivated,” he told a prosecutorial-sounding Matt Lauer that “I am responsible for what happened here,” and that his future would “be a decision for the President to make.”

By the end of the week, Democrats were threatening more subpoenas, Washington was wondering whether the near-mythical Karl Rove would testify, and the ground underneath Gonzales seemed soggier.

Greeting rising viewers on the March 16 edition of CBS’s “Early Show,” correspondent Bill Plante did not mince words in saying that “influential Republicans around the White House…say [Gonzales is] finished, he’s a problem, he has to go.”

In addition to the U.S. Attorney flap, several other of the week’s top stories were driven by breaking events. The dramatic news of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s confession of culpability in everything from the 9/11 attack to a plot to kill Jimmy Carter was released by the Defense Department on March 14. And it came in the middle of a difficult news cycle for the administration.

For the second week in a row, the President’s Latin American trip was a top-10 story, but angry protesters often commandeered the headlines. The old issue of gays in the military was resurrected as the eighth biggest story (3%) when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace ignited a furor by describing homosexuality as immoral. Problems in the mortgage market, slowing retail sales, and rising inflation turned the nation’s economic numbers into the 10th biggest story at 2%.

And there wasn’t much good news for the administration in the expanding investigation into problems with the treatment of wounded veterans, which was now in its fourth week as a major running story, according to the NCI. The big news last week was the ousting of Army Surgeon General Kevin Kiley from that post, as he became the third major Army official to lose his job in the wake of the Walter Reed scandal. When it came to the Iraq strategy debate, the White House earned a split decision from Congress, as a House committee passed a resolution setting a withdrawal deadline from Iraq while the full Senate defeated a somewhat similar measure.

One shadowy figure thrust into the middle of the Iraq war debate got her moment in the media spotlight by testifying before Congress on March 16. Valerie Plame—the outed CIA agent and central issue in the trial that convicted vice-presidential aide Scooter Libby—spoke her piece in what ABC news anchor Charles Gibson called “a dramatic scene on Capitol Hill.”

This too, seemed to be a result of Democratic Party control, since it is less likely she would have been invited to testify and embarrass the Administration had Republicans been in charge. (Most of them didn’t show up to hear her testimony.)

“My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and State Department,” said Plame in her most memorable sound bite.

Her one day of testimony was enough to become a top 10 story.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

On his syndicated radio show, Michael Savage played a clip from a Hillary Clinton campaign speech and then disgustedly turned it off.

“Can you believe this?” he asked. “She has no qualifications whatsoever other than gall. She’s running sheer-ly on gall.”

Another popular conservative talkhost, Rush Limbaugh, argued the New York Senator is so dependent on her husband that he vowed to refer to her henceforth as “Mrs. Bill Clinton.”

On its face, none of this is new or surprising. For eight straight weeks, the 2008 presidential race has been one of the top five stories in PEJ’s Talk Show Index. Last week, it was the No. 2 story on the radio and cable talk shows, filling 17% of the airtime from March 4 to March 9.

And the most-discussed candidate has consistently been the unofficial Democratic frontrunner and former First Lady. (From mid-January until now, she played a significant role in nearly 50% of all the talk segments devoted to 2008 campaign.) And much of that has been not been flattering.

Last week, only the verdict in the Scooter Libby trial (at 28%) generated more talk airtime than the presidential campaign. And in a week in which the metastasizing Walter Reed scandal did not really catch fire, some verbal pyrotechnics—an Ann Coulter insult and a battle between cable TV hosts—were among the 10 leading talk topics.

The fact that Hillary Clinton took something of a pounding last week wasn’t big news. But an examination of the talk outlets revealed an interesting twist to that pattern. Whatever the motivation, some of those conservative hosts are not only using their microphones to blast away at Clinton. They are also embracing, or at least saying nice things about, Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat whose primary virtue in their eyes may be that he can defeat Clinton for the nomination.

Whether heartfelt, strategic or simply faint praise, this Obama mini-love fest may strike some as sounding strange coming from some icons of conservative talk.

After criticizing Clinton’s March 4 speech in Selma Alabama on his radio show, for instance, Hannity said Obama’s address advocating more personal responsibility “was echoing Bill Cosby…In a call to action, Barack Obama sounded a lot like Cosby.” As the host was quick to note, “I love Bill Cosby.”

On his March 5 show, Limbaugh was also eager to award the battle of Selma to the Illinois Senator. “Obama upstaged Mrs. Clinton yesterday,” he declared firmly. “Drew a larger crowd, didn’t speak with a fake southern accent, didn’t screech."

Speaking on the March 5 edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” columnist Robert Novak struck that theme.

“I think [Hillary Clinton] is scared to death of Senator Obama, who is really a very fresh face, and very attractive,” Novak fairly gushed. “He’s a phenomenon.”

The biggest topic of the week, the jury’s decision to find Libby guilty of perjury and obstruction, triggered more of a classic ideological tong war between hosts who viewed the trial either as an indictment of White House Iraq war policy or as a confusing witch hunt.

The reaction to Coulter’s use of an anti-homosexual slur to describe John Edwards was not a major story in general news coverage. But it was the eighth-biggest talk subject at 3%. And one talk-only topic was the ongoing war of words between the Fox News Channel and MSNBC/NBC. With Joe Scarborough and Bill O’Reilly as the combatants, these self-referential talk wars finished as the 10th biggest topic at 2%.

The Talk Show Index, released each Friday, 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 Index has consistently confirmed that the few stories that attract the most general news coverage are dramatically magnified on the talk airwaves. That was again true last week. While the Libby and presidential campaign stories combined to fill 22% of the overall newshole last week, they accounted for 45% of the talk menu.

One story that triggered major news coverage, but did not get the talk lines buzzing last week was the expanding investigation into problems with the medical care of wounded veterans. That broad topic, the Iraq war at home, filled 7% of the overall newshole in our weekly News Coverage Index. But it accounted for only 6% of the air time in the talk universe and was ignored entirely by the radio hosts in our sample. With all sides on the Iraq war debate in essential agreement on the need to fix the problem, the subject may not lend itself to the kind of polarizing arguments that drive talk radio.

And the burgeoning Justice Department scandal involving a group of fired U.S. attorneys (the seventh biggest story in the news Index at 2%), generated almost no attention on the talk programs. That may change next week since much of the growing pressure on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign occurred too late for this Index.

One characteristic that the two big talk topics had in common last week was they attracted both cable and radio talkers. The Libby verdict, for example, generated about 103 minutes of cable airtime and almost 94 minutes of radio talk. The Presidential race generated about 70 minutes of cable conversation and 50 minutes of radio time.

But unlike the Libby trial, which was dissected by both liberal and conservative hosts, the battle for the White House was fodder largely for the conservative-leaning hosts, from Tucker Carlson and O’Reilly on cable to Limbaugh and Hannity on radio.

There’s a history here. The Clintons have been talk-show lightning rods since the early 90’s when rookie President Bill Clinton tried to change the military’s policy on gay service and Hillary worked to revamp the health care system.

Meanwhile, one spirited exchange among talk hosts last week seemed to suggest that corporate and network allegiances may be as much of a factor as ideology and politics when it comes to picking fights on the air.

In what might have been one of the harsher exchanges of the week, O’Reilly devoted part of his March 8 show to an attack on NBC News for being “sympathetic to the far left” and on its correspondent Richard Engel for “consistently tak[ing] an anti-war view in general."

The next night, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough struck back by accusing O’Reilly of skewing the facts and criticizing “NBC and a war correspondent in Iraq…from the safety of his cushy Fox News Washington D.C. studio."

These news wars might be considered too much inside baseball for the public to grasp – if they weren’t so entertaining.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Libby Trial - 28%

2. Campaign 2008 - 17%

3. Iraq Policy Debate - 10%

4. Iraq Homefront - 6%

5. Immigration - 5%

6. Bush Trip to Latin America - 4%

7. Events in Iraq - 3%

8. Ann Coulter's Comments - 3%

9. Congress - 3%

10. Talk Show Host Wars - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Libby Trial - 13%

2. Campaign 2008 - 9%

3. Events in Iraq - 8%

4. Iraq Homefront - 7%

5. Iraq Policy Debate - 7%

6. Bush Trip to Latin America - 3%

7. Fired US Attorney Controversy - 2%

8. Immigration - 2%

9. US Domestic Terrorism - 2%

10. Bronx Fire - 2%

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

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

Broadcasting from Baghdad on March 6, NBC’s Brian Williams introduced his first story by connecting events in the Iraqi capital to a verdict in a Washington courtroom about 6,000 miles away.

Former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, he declared solemnly, had been convicted of perjury and obstruction “in a case that has to do with the very underpinnings of this war here in Iraq.” In an instant, on NBC and elsewhere, the Libby verdict was transformed into a story about the rationale for the war.

Ever since President Bush announced his troop “surge” on January 10, the war in Iraq has dominated the news as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. Specifically, it was the fierce political debate over strategy in Congress that has commanded the most attention. The debate over the war has finished first or second in the Index’s top story list for eight straight weeks, from early January to early March.

But last week, even as Congressional Democrats fine-tuned their anti-surge tactics, the policy debate slipped to its lowest spot of the year, down into to fifth place (at 7%). Instead, two events that offered different and relatively newer angles into the contentious issues surrounding Iraq trumped the political argument over what war strategy would best serve America’s interests.

One was the Libby verdict. It was the biggest story last week, filling 13% of the overall newshole from March 4 to March 9.

Libby “was a leading voice, if not the leading voice in the bureaucracy in the run up to war, the whole case for the war,” noted Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe on Tucker Carlson’s March 7 MSNBC show.

The second war-related subject that offered a different perspective on Iraq was the expanding examination of problems with the care of wounded vets. The war at home was the fourth biggest subject of the week (at 7%). A major story since the Washington Post’s February 18-19 expose on Walter Reed Army Hospital, this was the third week in a row that the treatment of vets held a top spot in the news agenda, after weeks in which the homefront was something of a media afterthought. The story has broadened far beyond the situation at Walter Reed.

Events inside Iraq itself finished as the third-biggest subject last week (at 8%), meaning that four of the top five stories were about the war.

The lone exception was the No. 2 story of the week, the 2008 Presidential race (9%), which was fueled by Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s dueling March 4 appearances in Selma, Alabama.

And Anna Nicole Smith, who died on February 8, finally dropped off the radar screen last week, trumped by another tabloid tempest, one likely to be even more short-lived.

While pols on both sides of the Iraq debate are rushing to condemn the problems at Walter Reed and vowing reform, the underlying issue can be politically tricky. Backers of the “surge” in Iraq have made support for the troops a linchpin of that policy. And pro-withdrawal forces are trying to emphasize their concern for the troops as they distance themselves from U.S. policy. Moreover, the stories of wounded vets denied adequate care seem to be resonating with the public.

On the March 5 CBS newscast, Katie Couric described the “national outrage over the treatment of America’s wounded,” as the show segued into the dramatic Congressional testimony of Annette McLeod, wife of a wounded National Guardsman.

“This is how we treat our soldiers, we give them nothing,” said McLeod, fighting back tears. “But they’re good enough to sacrifice their life and we give them nothing.”

The wounded vets and Libby stories took different routes to the top tier of news subjects last week. Since the Libby trial got underway in late January, it has been a steady but low-intensity top 10 story, regularly generating 3% to 4% of the overall weekly coverage, with the exception of last week’s Index, when it dropped to 1%. Throughout the trial, it did best in radio and cable, generating 6% of the coverage in those sectors.

That all changed with the verdict last week, when the story gained volume and a theme. Representative of the tone was this March 7 headline in The Bakersfield Californian: “Verdict a blow to Bush: Trial revealed Cheney’s role in attacks against Iraq critics.” But even with premature speculation about the President pardoning Libby to feed coverage, the story tapered off noticeably throughout the course of the week.

Since the Index launched at the beginning of the year, the Iraq homefront category had never generated more than 3% of the weekly coverage and frequently failed to make the top 10 story list. But ever since the Post’s investigative coup on Walter Reed in late February, it’s been one of the five biggest stories each week. (Last week, it did best on network TV, filling 12% of the airtime.)

What started as a story about bureaucratic mismanagement at Walter Reed has spread to include a major political component—and last week Bush moved quickly to appoint Donna Shalala and Bob Dole to head a commission on the subject. But it’s also broadened the focus to problems in the entire military heath care system and isn’t likely to fade from view any time soon. (On March 12, the news broke that the Army’s top medical officer, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, had lost his job as a result of the Walter Reed revelations.)

“The scandal is far from over,” warned NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski on the March 6 “Today” show.

Two of the other top stories last week also didn’t translate into particularly good news for the administration. Coverage of the President’s trip to Latin America (sixth place at 3%) included a number of reports about the anti-Bush protests that erupted in Brazil and Argentina. The seventh biggest story (at 2%) was a potentially burgeoning scandal—allegations that the firing of some U.S. attorneys was politically motivated—that generated Congressional hearings last week. Still, those proceedings were largely drowned out by the focus on Iraq.

And finally dropping beneath the media’s radar screen—or maybe just temporarily exhausting itself—is the tawdry Anna Nicole saga. After four weeks in a row as a top-10 story, the various legal battles surrounding the death of the blonde bombshell consumed less than 1% of the overall newshole last week.

For the record, the Smith story finished just behind another tabloid tale involving a quasi-celebrity—the controversy over racy Internet photos of “American Idol” contestant Antonella Barba.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: On Tuesday, March 6, the capture of the web sites in our sample was conducted at 1:00 pm ET instead of the normal time of between 9:00 and 10:00 am ET.

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

Two dramatic breaking events and two long-simmering story lines were among a list of subjects competing for media attention in an unusually heavy news week, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from February 25-March 2.

The breaking news stories were very different kinds of events—tornadoes in the South and a financial plunge on Wall Street. The simmering, slower developing subjects were the growing controversy about treatment of soldiers at home—for the second week running—and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

They joined two stories that typically dominate the Index—the 2008 Presidential race and the debate over Iraq policy—on the roster of top stories last week.

The devastating March 1 tornadoes that swept through the South and left 20 dead was the fourth biggest story (filling 6% of the overall newshole). The Dow’ s 416-point freefall on February 27—the biggest single day loss since after 9/11—was right behind as fifth biggest story (6%).

The bulk of the stock plunge coverage occurred on February 27 and 28, and the storms were news for just the last two days of the week. Even so, the level of network TV coverage —11% for the storm and 9% for the market drop—helped propel those events onto the top story list for the full week.

At the same time, two issues that are intertwined with the “war on terror,” but have been largely eclipsed by ongoing Iraq coverage surfaced last week. Triggered by the bombing near Vice President Dick Cheney, reports of a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda earned the conflict in Afghanistan its heaviest coverage of the year and made it last week’s seventh biggest story (at 4%).

And the question of the medical care delivered to our wounded soldiers spilled into two different categories—the Iraq homefront (third biggest story at 6%) and events inside Iraq (sixth story at 5%).

There were two “news hooks” that accelerated coverage of the war casualties. One was the dramatic reappearance of former ABC anchor Bob Woodruff, who suffered severe head injuries while covering Iraq. The other was the continuing fallout over the Washington Post’s February 18-19 series exposing major problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center—with several top Army officials losing their jobs.

John McCain’s announcement of his candidacy on David Letterman’s show, meanwhile, helped make the 2008 presidential campaign, by the narrowest of margins, the top story at 7%. The second-place Iraq policy debate story (6%) was spurred by news that the U.S. will attend a regional conference with Iran and Syria, a decision some of the media played as a reversal of policy.

With the large number of significant stories vying for attention, last week was the first time since PEJ’s Index launched in January that the biggest story failed to fill 10% of the overall newshole. It’s also the first time that the top story and fifth biggest story were separated by a mere percentage point.

Though the Anna Nicole Smith legal mess was the eighth biggest story at 4%, that was the lowest amount of coverage since her February 8 death. But if the Smith saga is slowly slipping from public view, one re-emerging newsmaker was former vice-president Al Gore who was featured in two top 10 stories—the 2008 presidential race and the February 25 Oscar ceremonies (which finished 10th at 3%).

Even though the attack near Cheney on a U.S. base in Afghanistan and the Dow’s dive both occurred on February 27, the trajectories of those stories differed. Much of the subsequent stock market coverage featured Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s reassuring February 28 remarks to Congress hat “there didn't seem to be any single trigger of the market correction we saw yesterday.”

Conversely, coverage of the Cheney episode quickly expanded to focus on fears that the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan was growing much more ominous.

In his February 27 evening news story on the suicide bombing, CBS correspondent David Martin reported that “26,000 American troops are gearing for what is expected to be a spring of heavy fighting against the Taliban, now operating out of virtual safe haven in Pakistan.” In another piece of disquieting news, he added that American officials now fear that Osama bin Laden feels physically secure enough to meet “with his senior leaders face-to-face and plot attacks on the U.S.”

That dovetailed with a page-1 February 28 New York Times story concluding that the strike near Cheney, “demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago.”

Until now, the conflict in Afghanistan had never generated more than 2% of the weekly news coverage, half of what we saw last week. But like the escalating U.S. tensions with Iran—which emerged as a major story in mid-February after simmering on the back burner—the prospect of a bloodier conflict in Afghanistan could become a larger and more regular element of the news menu.

It’s not accurate to say that the media have ignored those wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. But last week, the intensity of that coverage seemed to increase notably—perhaps because of the Post’s Walter Reed investigation. (Newsweek’s cover story, “Failing our Wounded,” included a photo of a female soldier who had lost both legs.)

Now in its second week of sustained coverage, the message last week was that the problems go deeper than Walter Reed Army Hospital, where the Washington Post expose revealed substandard conditions for outpatient care.

During a March 1 story on the military’s ailing medical system, NBC’s newscast included this memorable quote from a veterans’ advocate: “We don’t want to throw a band-aid on a sunken chest wound. The system is hemorrhaging.” On February 28, Bill O’Reilly began his Fox News Channel show with an appeal to raise funds for the “Disabled Veterans Life Memorial Foundation,” which is working to build a memorial in Washington.

But some of the most dramatic coverage came when Bob Woodruff—who spent 36 days unconscious after being wounded in Iraq—returned to ABC after 13 months. In advance of his special that night, “World News Tonight” ran a February 27 piece that showed Woodruff re-learning to speak with a helmet covering his damaged skull. The segment was titled “The homecoming.” (The next night, Woodruff reported for the newscast about the growing number of veterans with brain injuries.)

A comeback of a different sort made news last week when Al Gore’s global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar on February 25. That, not surprisingly, triggered some fresh speculation about Gore’s 2008 presidential intentions. The former veep played along, performing in an Oscar telecast bit (watched by about 40 million people) in which he feigned a presidential announcement.

That level of exposure meant that the man who jokingly says “I used to be the next President of the United States,” was—even if only temporarily—fair game for pundits.

“In the entertainment world, if Al Gore is your highlight, you’re in big trouble,” snapped radio talker Rush Limbaugh the next day as he trashed the Oscar show as hopelessly boring. “If it weren’t for his varicose veins, the guy would be totally colorless.”

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

On February 23, Sean Hannity welcomed listeners to his syndicated radio show with a greeting designed to rally folks less than keen on Senator Hillary Clinton. “This is the ‘Stop Hillary Express,’” declared the conservative talker. ”Jump on board.”

Two days earlier, liberal radio host Randi Rhodes spent her time whaling away at the leading the Republicans in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“The frontrunners seem to be ‘Grandpa McCain,’ ‘Happy Pants Giuliani’ and ‘Brigham Romney,’” she declared, lampooning Senator John McCain for his age (70), former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani for his multiple marriages, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for his Mormon religion.

On February 20, it was Michael Savage, the conservative contrarian, who put a pox on everyone’s candidacy.

“Right now, we need a new Teddy Roosevelt,” he declared. “But there is no Teddy Roosevelt. There’s nobody out there except these sheisters and these phonies.”

After telling his listeners that he’s received 1,178,000 votes on a web poll in favor of him running for president. Savage asked: “Do you actually think that Obama could get a million votes on a web site saying he should run? I kinda’ doubt it.”

Welcome to the intersection of presidential politics and talk radio, circa late February 2007. For last week at least, it was a wild and woolly place where passions are roused by hammering the bad guy (which for the moment at least seems more important than endorsing the good guy) and where the dialogue is limited only by the host’s imagination. With a crowded field full of well-known candidates, the 2008 race has been a major talk topic since Barack Obama’s January 16 announcement that he was forming an exploratory committee.

For the week of February 18-23, the 2008 presidential race was the second-biggest story on cable and radio talk shows, filling 19% of the airtime. It finished just behind the week’s top subject, (the never-ending saga of Anna Nicole Smith at 22%) and edged out the debate over Iraq strategy, which accounted for 18% of the talk menu.

Still, as a talk subject, the presidential race was up significantly from last week (when it attracted 11% of the talkers’ attention). One factor was a high-profile skirmish between the Clinton and Obama campaigns after Obama supporter and Hollywood mogul David Geffen publicly criticized Bill and Hillary Clintons’ character. The sparring match between the two Democratic heavyweights helped fuel talk show chatter as well as the news coverage. (The campaign was the top story in the news media overall last week, filling 12% of the newshole. Thus, as usual, a big story in the media overall is even bigger in talk media).

So far this year, cable talk has made more of the early days of the political campaign than has radio. But last week—in a reversal of that pattern—the radio hosts devoted more time to campaign events than did their cable colleagues (74 minutes to 56 minutes). And while the Geffen episode worked its way into their conversations, the radio hosts simply seemed inclined to use their considerable editorial license to vent about their least favorite candidates.

“If you listen to Hillary,” said Rush Limbaugh with more than a touch of exasperation on his February 20 show, “I’m still stunned….that anybody is willing to credit Mrs. Clinton with any kind of coherence.”

The Index reveals a serious schism between the cable and radio talkers when it came to special subjects last week. While the 2008 presidential battle was the primary topic of the radio hosts, the cable anchors continued to favor the continuing saga of Anne Nicole Smith. Last week, they were fascinated by the legal fight over Smith’s body and the antics of Judge “cryin” Larry Seidlin. Her story accounted for 142 minutes of the cable talk time that PEJ examined compared to a mere nine minutes on talk radio.

Even the discussion of the U.S. strategy in Iraq could not escape the long shadow of Anna Nicole and her posthumous paternity fight.

When MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews asked Iraqi war veteran Paul Rieckhoff on February 19 whether the debate over Iraq damaged troop morale, Rieckhoff responded by shrugging that off. “Morale is impacted by frequent tours, by divorce rate, by the fact that America is paying attention to Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith and not what’s happening in Fallujah and Ramadi,” he said.

There have been numerous efforts to link the sad demise of Smith with the problems besetting Spears, the partying pop idol who has hopped in and out of rehab. But although Spears’s erratic public behavior has generated plenty of coverage in the entertainment outlets, it has failed to really break through into the mainstream media coverage or into the talk show culture.

Last week, while Smith was the leading talk subject, Spears’ troubles generated only 2% of the talk airtime, making her the 10th biggest story. (Only Sean Hannity, who has a Fox News Channel program along with his radio show, seemed interested in her plight.)

The Washington Post’s powerful February 18 and 19 expose of problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was picked up by much of the media last week, making the Iraq war on the homefront the fifth most covered story in the overall Index, at 5%.

The story of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans being hobbled by bureaucratic red tape and sub-standard conditions at the famed military hospital got roughly the same amount of attention from the talk shows, (4% of the airtime, the fifth biggest talk topic). But it received very selective treatment, with only a few of the cable hosts—CNN’s Lou Dobbs and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Matthews—spending time on the subject.

Liberal radio talker Rhodes also devoted a few minutes to the Walter Reed scandal.

But in the world of talk, where news is more a matter of perspective, it was not universal. In the content examined by the PEJ, the issue was not picked up by any of the conservative radio hosts or by the Fox News Channel talk anchors.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Anna Nicole Smith - 22%

2. Campaign 2008 - 19%

3. Iraq Policy Debate - 18%

4. Iran - 4%

5. Iraq Homefront - 4%

6. Immigration - 4%

7. Libby Trial - 3%

8. Events in Iraq - 3%

9. Global Warming - 2%

10. Britney Spears - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Campaign 2008 - 12%

2. Iraq Policy Debate - 11%

3. Anna Nicole Smith - 10%

4. Events in Iraq - 9%

5. Iraq Homefront - 5%

6. Iran - 5%

7. Libby Trial - 3%

8. Climbers Rescued on Mt. Hood - 3%

9. Jet Blue - 2%

10. General War on Terror - 2%

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

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

It began with a headline splashed atop the story on the front page of the February 18 Washington Post: “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army’s Top Medical Facility.”

In a powerful two-day series last week, the Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull reported that Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., the venerable hospital famed for treating U.S. presidents, had turned into a “messy bureaucratic battlefield” for hundreds of outpatient troops wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses” was the wrenching description in the opening paragraph.Just five days later, after taking a tour of Walter Reed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates left no doubt that the Post’s work had an impact. “Those responsible for having allowed this unacceptable situation to develop will indeed be held responsible,” the secretary said.

At a time when supporting the troops is the only common ground in the polarizing debate over Iraq, the Post investigation reverberated through the White House, Pentagon, and media. Picked up by everyone from cable hosts to network anchors, the story of the war on the homefront—dominated by the Walter Reed story—received its highest level of coverage of the year the week of February 18-23, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index.

The fifth biggest story of the week, (filling 5% of the overall newshole) the Iraq homefront generated the most attention on the broadcast network news, where it made up fully 10% of the airtime, much of it crediting the Post.

If the Walter Reed expose is a classic example of investigative journalism influencing the media agenda, another big story was fueled by the bizarre, even clownish, behavior of a Florida judge on TV.

As has been the case ever since Anna Nicole Smith’s sudden death on February 8, the media—especially cable news—continued their breathless fascination with the life and legal tangles of the troubled Playmate/heiress.

The Smith tabloid tale filled 10% of the overall newshole, (up from 6% the previous week) and was the third-biggest story. It finished just behind the debate over Iraq policy (the second biggest story at 11%).

Coverage of the 2008 presidential race was the top story overall, at 12%, fueled by a dustup between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over remarks by big Democratic donor David Geffen.

Even with all the play given to the Walter Reed/Iraq homefront story last week, two other Iraq-related topics generated more coverage. The policy debate story, which commanded the most attention on radio (21%), was driven by Britain’s announcement that it would withdraw 1,600 of its roughly 7,000 troops in Iraq.

The situation inside Iraq itself was the fourth biggest story overall at 9%. The coverage was punctuated by the news that Britain’s Prince Harry was heading to Iraq and by reports that insurgents were increasing the lethality of their attacks with chlorine bombs. Events in Iraq were even bigger news online, leading the sector and making up 17% of the newshole.

But it was the intensity and immediacy of the response to the Post’s digging that reshaped the news agenda to the question of medical care of troops at home last week.

Interviewed on the February 19 edition of PBS’s “NewsHour,” Dana Priest said the reporting team, which spent more than four months on the story, was stunned by the conditions they found. “When we started hearing these stories of neglect, and in some cases indifference, it was unbelievable,” she said.

A day later, one of the first questions at a briefing by White House press secretary Tony Snow was whether the President knew of the situation at Walter Reed before the Post stories.

“I don't know exactly where he learned it,” said a somewhat defensive Snow, “but I can tell you that we believe that they [wounded veterans] deserve better.”

On February 21, CNN’s Lou Dobbs aired an interview in which the top Army commander at Walter Reed, Maj. Gen. George Weightman, admitted he was unaware of the problems documented by the Post and took full responsibility.

“It was obviously a failure on my part to reach down and touch those soldiers and find out directly from them,” Weightman said.

At the end of week, Brian Williams opened his February 23 newscast by declaring, in urgent tones: “The Secretary of Defense says what he saw today at Walter Reed is unacceptable for American war veterans and he’s promising change.”

All in all, a pretty quick trip from the front page of the Post to the front burner at the Pentagon.

Pointed criticism of the Pentagon also helped elevate the 2008 White House derby to the biggest overall story last week, the second time that has happened this year. Republican John McCain’s statement during a South Carolina campaign stop that “I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” added flavor to the coverage and made headlines.

But more attention was paid to something the political press corps may have been waiting for—a skirmish between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (And this one was even filled with Hollywood intrigue.) The story erupted after producer David Geffen—a former supporter of the Clintons who is now with Obama—gave an interview to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd critical of the Clintons’ character. When Hillary Clinton's campaign asked Obama to disavow Mr. Geffen, Obama's campaign snapped back with a definite no.

The press played on the dynamics of story lines it had already laid down—was Hillary going to be too tough, was Obama ready for the big time.

In it front page story on February 22, the New York Times seemed fascinated by “a remarkably caustic exchange between the Clinton and Obama campaigns that highlighted the sensitivity in the Clinton camp to Mr. Obama’s rapid rise as a rival and his positioning as a fresh face unburdened by the baggage borne by Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York.”

And we’ve still got 20 months to Election Day.

By then, perhaps the Anna Nicole Smith saga, and all its odd subplots, will have played out.

Last week, Smith wasn’t even the main attraction as the disposition of her body was argued about in a Broward County courtroom. Instead, Judge Larry Seidlin was the latest curiosity. His antics became a major topic for the cable TV universe that devoted more than a quarter (26%) of its air time to the Smith case. (In perhaps his most memorable moment, Seidlin sobbed as he was awarding custody of Smith’s body to the guardian of her five-month-old daughter.)

Cable coverage continued to evince both fascination and disgust with the story, which has played to big numbers. One host even thought the judge’s weird performance was, in its own way, fitting.

After airing a photo of Seidlin along with the caption “Court Jester?” MSNBC prime-time host Joe Scarborough described him as “an emotionally challenged judge,” whose courtroom performance “was just a perfect ending to a tawdry tale of sex, drugs and marrying old.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: Due to a technical error in recording, a Friday daytime program on CNN replaced the MSNBC daytime program that was supposed to be rotated into this week's sample.

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

Every week since PEJ launched its regular examination of cable and radio talk show content in January, one subject has been the hottest topic on the talk agenda.

Last week was no exception. The debate over what the United States should do about its troops in Iraq again dominated the culture of talk, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index for February 11-16. This time it made up 24% of the air time, the third highest percentage since the Index began.

There were plenty of other hot-button issues that got chewed over. The tawdry tabloid tangles left behind by Anna Nicole Smith came second, commanding 13% of the time (nearly all of it on cable TV). A 2008 presidential race in high gear 20 months before Election Day came next (at 11%). The unnerving prospect of a U.S war with Iran filled 8% of the time in a week when U.S. officials were trying—with some difficulty—to make a case that weapons from Teheran were killing troops in Iraq.

Yet, a close look at how major stories play out on talk outlets helps explain how the Iraq debate is such a tailor-made topic for both the radio and cable components of the opinion-driven talk culture.

For starters, some stories that got significant coverage last week in the media generally—such as the brutal winter weather or the major nuclear deal with North Korea—got little or no traction on the talk shows because there’s no obvious ideological or philosophical angle. The less-than-1% of time devoted to the winter storms seems to debunk the old joke that “everybody loves to talk about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

A number of top stories were popular in only one part of the talk universe while all but ignored in the other. The Anna Nicole saga, for example, generated about 87 minutes of cable TV talk and less than 4 minutes on radio. U.S./Iran tensions, the “Scooter” Libby” trial (3% in the talk Index), and the immigration issue (4%) were also much more popular on TV.

The story about the implications of the Iraq war on the U.S. homefront, conversely, (3%) was the sole province of a few radio talkers interested in sounding off on the U.S. plan to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees.

The race for the White House consumed a significant amount of talk time. But some of that conversation seemed tangential last week, such as the controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that Barack Obama renounce his race and another host's denigrating comments about the physical appearance of some of the candidates’ wives.

Only when it came to the issue of U.S. strategy in Iraq, did you really get a full-throated, substantial debate (approximately 69 minutes on radio and 94 on cable). It seems both liberals and conservatives find grist for motivating their audience base, attacking the opposition and scrambling to stake out the moral high ground on a polarizing subject that offers numerous angles for exploration.

On the February 16 edition of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes”—the day the House passed a resolution rebuking Bush’s “surge” —the argument was about Democrats’ tactics and intentions. Conservative co-host Sean Hannity called the non-binding resolution “a stealth plan to defund the war.”

But the day before, liberal radio host Randi Rhodes found in the Congressional maneuvering reason to denounce conservatives. She was angry at the efforts of Senate Republicans who were preventing vote on a similar resolution in that body. “The Senate is like on the verge of anarchy,” she decried. “They’re not even participating in the American experiment of democracy.”

Typically, the talk Index has found that the hosts tend to focus on a few select stories that receive major media attention and then use their microphones to magnify those topics. That’s certainly the case with the Iraq policy debate, which last week attracted 11% of the overall news coverage, but filled nearly a quarter of the talk time studied. (On the radio talk shows, that subject accounted for almost 30% of the conversation.)

Why is the issue so popular? With so many key players and critical news developments, it works on a cable talk format that frequently relies on guest interviews to either illuminate or enflame a conversation. At the same time, it’s adaptable to the radio side of talk, which is driven almost entirely a host’s own passions and prejudices along with a fresh supply of events capable of sparking anger or support.

Thus, the February 15 edition of “Hardball,” was a forum for Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Biden to pitch his complex and not very popular plan for an Iraq “federal” system that would separate the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sectors.

“It’s hard for Congress to lay out a foreign policy,” Biden admitted, while maintaining that “the federal system is the only way out.”

On February 12, it was Michael Savage, a conservative radio host with a contrarian streak, who claimed that Bush “lost his nerve” in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

“The man started a war, he picked a fight, and he doesn’t know how to end it,” Savage bellowed, voicing sentiments that probably managed to simultaneously infuriate and hearten people on both sides of the war debate.

For all the media’s fascination with the Anna Nicole saga—which shows little sign of abating—there’s simply not nearly as much fodder for the talk menu—especially on radio.

Why the difference? Not being able to show pictures of Anna Nicole on radio might be part of the explanation. Not being focused on court hearings and coroner press conferences is another. And it would take a pretty creative host to find a clear moral in this messy tale.

Indeed, only one radio talker studied by PEJ could figure out an Anna Nicole angle worth bringing up. Liberal Ed Schultz attacked the media feeding frenzy. He wanted more coverage of Iraq.

“How many Americans actually know we lost four service men and women in Iraq the day that [Smith] tipped over?” he asked. “Where’s the fair coverage of that? Where’s our priorities?”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Iraq Policy Debate - 24%

2. Anna Nicole Smith - 13%

3. Campaign 2008 - 11%

4. Iran - 8%

5. Immigration - 4%

6. Events in Iraq - 3%

7. Libby Trial - 3%

8. Iraq War Homefront - 3%

9. North Korea - 2%

10. General War on Terror - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Iraq Policy Debate - 11%

2. Campaign 2008 - 9%

3. Iran - 7%

4. Severe Weather - 7%

5. Events in Iraq - 7%

6. Anna Nicole Smith - 6%

7. North Korea - 6%

8. Libby Trial - 3%

9. Iraq Homefront - 2%

10. Afghanistan - 2%

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

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

In January, any talk of war with Iran was little more than a faint rumble on the horizon, and much of that was the coming from a few chatty cable talk hosts.

On January 12, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews opened his show by asking: “Is Bush trying to gin up a war with Iran?” Two days earlier, the President had announced his Baghdad “surge” strategy in a speech that also included a short passage that seemed to threaten action against Iran.

Most of the media focused on the Iraq policy, the reception to the speech and the growing antagonism toward in Congress toward the President’s plan. Any smoldering U.S. tensions with Iran—over its nuclear program and activities in Iraq—remained a small sidebar.

Through January, the subject of Iran never accounted for more than 1% of overall news coverage as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. And even that was largely from a handful of cable talkers, such as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who kept gnawing at the prospect of another major military front. But last week, those musings about confrontation with Teheran exploded into media consciousness as a serious war scare, according to the PEJ News Interest Index for February 11-16.

This burst of media attention propelled the American-Iranian war of words into the third biggest story of the week (at 7%) and the top story on the front page of newspapers (at 8%), according to the Index.

Only the debate over Iraq (11%) and the densely populated 2008 presidential race (9%) edged out Iran. And if the coverage of one element of the Iraq story—the whereabouts of radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr who was reported to be in Iran--were added in, Iran would have been the second biggest story of the week at 9%.

But the media are hardly a monolith. In cable, the top story of the week remained Anna Nicole Smith, a story that was not even in the top five in any other sector.

The reasons for Iran’s new prominence reveal something of the mercurial nature of news judgment and about when critical mass on a story is reached. Nothing truly dramatic happened last week involving Iran. But the Administration was inconsistent in its efforts to blame Iran for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. That led to new questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence, which in turn was compounded by a press conference in which Bush was peppered by questions about his intentions toward Iran. Democrats were quick to seize on his tough-sounding answers. That trifecta of official inconsistency, followed by tough talk, followed by partisan attacks moved Iran from the talk shows to the mainstream media.

The cover of Newsweek, headlined “The Hidden War With Iran,” depicted a grim-looking George Bush facing off against Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Bush’s news- making February 14 press conference came a day after a New York Times front-page story headlined “Skeptics Doubt U.S, Evidence on Iran Action in Iraq.” On Feb. 12, ABC’s “World News Tonight,” aired an interview in which Diane Sawyer—covering some of her blonde mane with a scarf—asked Ahmadinejad flatly: “Do you personally fear an invasion or an attack by the United States?”

Iran also generated more coverage than a landmark nuclear agreement with another member of the “Axis of Evil,” North Korea (6%) and surpassed the continued heavy breathing over Anna Nicole Smith’s tabloid legal tangles (6%).

(It takes a crowded news menu to push the Utah mall massacre and Vladimir Putin’s harsh, Cold-War-style critique of U.S policy out of the top 10 story list.)

A number of major stories competed for media attention last week and for the first time since the Index’s launch in January, a different subject topped each media sector. While Iran led the newspaper category, events in Iraq topped online (it took up 14% of the newshole). Brutal winter weather was the biggest network TV news event at 16% of the time on the morning and evening programs. On radio, the Iraq policy debate in Washington was the biggest topic at 27%.

On cable, however, the death of former playmate Anna Nicole Smith again dominated (eating up at 20% of the airtime studied).

The Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes were particularly devoted to sifting through the thorny legal issues left in Smith’s wake. But it was CNN’s Paula Zahn who came closest to accusing the public of outright hypocrisy.

In a February 16 segment in which she noted that 71% of the respondents to a CNN.com poll said they were not interested in the blonde bombshell, Zahn called the story “America’s newest guilty pleasure,” adding, “don’t bother denying it. We’ve seen the ratings, we’ve watched the magazines fly off the rack. We know millions of you are out there.”

When not busy with Anna Nicole, even cable managed to devote 9% of it airtime to Iran last week. What made it such a big story when it had been percolating for weeks before? The subject was stoked at a February 11 briefing in Baghdad, in which U. S. military officials ratcheted up the heat by accusing Iran’s leaders of providing weapons that killed scores of U.S. and allied troops in Iraq. The situation was muddied two days later when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace publicly cast doubts on whether the evidence proved that the government in Teheran was directly involved in those weapons shipments.

Given that backdrop and the February 13 New York Time piece, the subject became a main agenda item at Bush’s February 14 press conference. In response to a battery of questions about Iran, the President fueled the coverage by stating that while it might be unclear whether “the head leaders of Iran” ordered the bombs to be sent into Iraq, “what matters is...they’re there.”

“When we find the networks that are enabling these weapons to end up in Iraq, we will deal with them,” he added. A good chunk of the subsequent coverage stressed the confrontational nature of those remarks, and quick denunciations of them by people like Hillary Clinton that day on the Senate floor.

Iran might have been an even bigger story had it not been for the House’s February 16 passage of a resolution critical of Bush’s Iraq strategy. The vote pushed coverage of the policy debate up late in the week. Meanwhile, coverage of the bloodshed inside Iraq (fifth biggest story) focused largely on the security crackdown in Baghdad and the question of whether Iraqi cleric al-Sadr had fled or moved to Iran. War-related events on the home front finished ninth at 2%, thanks to the administration’s announcement that it would accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees.

In the Presidential race, the No. 2 story of the week, the focus was the February 13 entrance into the campaign of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, which triggered a media debate about the impact of his Mormon religion and his rightward shift on some key wedge issues.

If mixed messages and a fight with Democrats fueled the coverage of Iran, it was the question of political opportunism that the media were exploring with Romney.

Romney’s potential problems were highlighted on the February 13 edition of conservative host Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show. While a screen caption asked the question “Will Romney’s flip-flopping kill his chances in 2008?”, Carlson put it slightly more diplomatically by noting that the candidate is “facing questions on his newly transformed positions on abortion, gay marriage, the economy among...other issues.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

On his February 8 Fox News Channel show, Bill O’Reilly professed to being befuddled by the fuss over the death of Playmate/heiress Anna Nicole Smith.

“I have to be honest, I have no interest in her,” said the No. 1 cable host, matter-of- factly. “I’m looking at her and seeing a media creation.”

If Smith’s life was a media creation, consider her death. The sad tale of Smith’s demise not only gripped the media overall. It fascinated the talk shows culture even more, according to the latest PEJ Talk Show Index.

O’Reilly himself, after dismissing the story, devoted part of two nights to it.

Smith’s death was the third hottest subject on cable and radio talk shows in the week of February 4-9 (making up 15% of all talk time), edged out by the debate over Iraq (19%) and the 2008 campaign (18%). But that actually understates the Anna Nicole-mania.

In the two days immediately following her death (February 8 and 9) Smith actually accounted for 37% of the talk show conversation. In that period, the Iraq debate (14%) and the White House race (9%) were almost afterthoughts.

Over the past five weeks, this Index has consistently revealed that cable and radio talk hosts amplify the few subjects that generate the most news coverage of the week. In the Smith case, that remained true. The 15% spent on Smith was almost twice the amount (9%) that the media overall devoted to the subject.

In the talk universe, Smith’s demise primarily attracted cable TV hosts, who devoted about three times as much time to the subject as their radio counterparts. More likely to have guests than the radio talkers, the cable guys interviewed a succession of experts about the unresolved tangle of legal, monetary and DNA issues.

On radio, however, the lack of an obvious ideological angle seemed to make Smith somewhat less inviting.

When those radio hosts did weigh in, a favorite theme was the excessive coverage itself. On that score, indeed, the liberals and the conservatives on radio finally found something they could agree on.

"They’re back to the pink and white dress—the same stock footage,” noted liberal host Randi Rhodes disapprovingly while watching CNN’s coverage. “It’s creepy. It’s crazy. It’s the front page of the New York Post.”

“Another drugged-out starlet collapses and dies and all the news of the world stops. Frankly, I’m sick of the news,” raged conservative host Michael Savage. To protest the media’s Anna Nicole fixation, Savage began reading from “Once Upon a Time in the Catskills” a memoir from a fellow named Phil Ratzer about the summer of 1958.

The Talk Show Index, released each Friday, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion—a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.) PEJ’s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index.

It is possible that Smith’s death may have eaten away at some of the talk time that normally would have been spent on Iraq last week. Although the debate over war strategy was the biggest subject for the fifth straight week, it failed to fill 20% of the talk menu for the first time.

The early-starting 2008 Presidential campaign remained the second-biggest topic thanks to Rudy Giuliani’s February 5 statement of candidacy. This was also the first time in a month that a Republican candidate generated more attention than the Democrats on the talk airwaves. The subject was heavily focused on whether the former New York mayor is too liberal for the GOP’s core constituency.

Two other hot-button political issues attracted more attention on the talk shows (the “Scooter” Libby trial at 7% and the Nancy Pelosi plane controversy at 4%) than they did in the overall news Index.

The Libby trial made the list because it was a favorite subject of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. Two likely reasons for their interest? NBC colleague Tim Russert was a key prosecution witness and Matthews himself became a sidebar to the trial.

On the February 7 edition of “Hardball,” Matthews reported that Russert’s testimony contradicted one of Libby’s key defense assertions—that he had learned about of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity from the journalist. Then turning to a more personal subject, Matthews explained that the trial also revealed “why Scooter called Tim Russert to complain about me.” (Evidence surfaced at the trial that Libby was advised to call Russert to complain about Matthews because Russert didn't like the "Hardball" host. Responding on Don Imus's radio show, Russert declared his affection for Matthews.)

Liberals and conservatives did find something to disagree about in the debate over the request that Speaker Nancy Pelosi use a government airplane large enough to fly non-stop to her home in California. The story was a bigger one on radio than on cable or the media overall.

With the strains of the Peter, Paul and Mary hit “Leaving on a Jet Plane” playing in the background, conservative radio host Sean Hannity criticized Pelosi for wanting “a gas guzzling presidential-sized aircraft.”

Liberal talker Ed Schultz took the opposing view. “This is basically a story about chauvinism,” he said, dismissing Pelosi’s critics.

One story that generated only modest buzz in the talk culture (4%) was the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak for the attempted murder of a love triangle rival. Other than wondering how she passed NASA muster, there apparently wasn’t much for the talk hosts to say.

But that certainly wasn’t the case when it came to the other big scandal story of the week. As he struggled to make sense of the sordid Smith saga, Bill O’Reilly called on none other than Geraldo Rivera to put the coverage in context. Rivera, a former daytime talk host and one of the godfathers of the tabloid media culture, struggled as he tried to define the intangibles that made her worthy of such feverish attention.

Celebrities such as Smith “may be living train wrecks,” Rivera offered. “But they are endearing in some strange, and maybe indefinable” way.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

1. Iraq Policy Debate - 19%

2. 2008 Campaign - 18%

3. Anna Nicole Smith Dies - 15%

4. Libby Trial - 7%

5. Pelosi Plane Controversy - 4%

6. Astronaut Scandal - 4%

7. Super Bowl - 4%

8. Immigration - 4%

9. Iran - 2%

10. Iraq War Homefront - 2%

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

1. Iraq Policy Debate - 12%

2. Events in Iraq - 10%

3. Anna Nicole Smith Dies - 9%

4. Campaign 2008 - 8%

5. Astronaut Scandal - 6%

6. Severe Weather - 3%

7. Super Bowl - 3%

8. Libby Trial - 3%

9. Bush's Budget Proposal - 3%

10. Iran - 2%

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

Printer-Friendly

E-mail

On February 9, about 24 hours after the death of Anna Nicole Smith, CNN curmudgeon Jack Cafferty was reading viewer emails complaining about non-stop cable coverage of that story—and agreeing with them.

“That’s the only story we reported [yesterday] for two solid hours and we weren’t the only ones,” growled Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room” sidekick. “Her death was tabloid gold and apparently, we just couldn’t help ourselves.”

“I know a lot of people are complaining about that,” said Blitzer, somewhat defensively. “But a lot of people are also watching.”

For the first time this year, “tabloid gold” fever seized at least some of the news media last week in a significant way, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from February 4 to February 9. Though it only made up two days of coverage, the sudden death of the Playmate turned heiress turned reality star was the No. 3 story in the news last week, almost edging out a bloody week in Iraq.

And that may be understating the feel of the coverage. The bosomy blonde’s demise consumed a staggering 50% of the cable newshole PEJ examined on February 8 and 9. Those are levels reminiscent of those pre-9/11 celebrity sagas—think Princess Di and JFK Jr.

The story lines ran from police procedural to racy, with a little bit of moralizing about celebrity culture—what killed her, who fathered her infant, and where her money would go. The February 9 headline in the New York Post, “CSI Probe in Siren Shocker,” seemed to sum it up.

Had it fallen more in the middle of the week, the Smith coverage, which made up 9% of the newshole in just two days, would have doubtless knocked news of events in Iraq out of the No. 2 spot in the news (at 10%) and come close to knocking out the debate at home over Iraq strategy as the No. 1 story of the week (it made up 12%). It was enough to overshadow what had been a good tale of sex and almost murder that preceded it —news that diaper-clad astronaut Lisa Nowak allegedly tried to kill a romantic rival. Nowak still made the Index’s top five story list (6%). Coverage of the 2008 White House race, which got a boost from Rudy Giuliani’s statement of candidacy, was the fourth biggest story at 8%.

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.) On some levels, the Nowak and Smith stories had elements in common. They were both female celebrities, and both tragedies conjured up human frailties such as lust, infidelity, and possibly, criminal behavior.

But the nature of the celebrity and the level of it may reflect something about the culture. Smith, who was famous for nudity, marrying an octogenarian millionaire, and being involved in sordid paternity suits, was the much bigger celebrity. Nowak, an astronaut and engineer, was virtually unknown until her infamy last week. (And like her life, Smith’s death became an exercise in paparazzi-commercialism. A video of EMTs trying to revive her, which reportedly sold for more than a half million, quickly circulated online.)

In both cases, the media coverage purported to justify the intensity of the coverage by looking for deeper meaning behind the stories.

In the Nowak situation, the angle that quickly emerged was whether NASA was properly training and evaluating its astronauts.

“NASA has never seen a story like this,” declared Katie Couric, introducing CBS’s February 6 newscast by characterizing the case as a “bizarre story that has left some people wondering about how astronauts are screened.”

A New York Times February 7 front page story wondered “whether the ‘Right Stuff’ image of astronauts has been tarnished, or if that image somehow confused technical excellence with emotional stability.”

In the Smith case, that deeper angle seemed more self-conscious and more guilt-ridden. Why were we so intrigued by a woman who, as MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann put it, is “principally famous merely for being famous?”

On her February 8 evening show, CNN’s Paula Zahn proffered as an answer the theory that this was a case of “America’s fixation on celebrity, on tragedy, on sex, money, tabloid headlines and death.”

Olbermann himself asked “Access Hollywood” correspondent Tony Potts: “Why has her death seemed to resonate so loudly? What…was she actually famous for?”

“Two words, Keith. I would say ‘Marilyn Monroe,’” Potts responded, conjuring up comparisons to another troubled blonde bombshell who died under mysterious circumstances, but only after a much more significant acting career than Smith’s.

That angle was indeed repeatedly conjured up in the images oft replayed, her Marilyn poses, her Marilyn hair, and now her Marilyn-like death. The pictures aired over and over as cable anchors waited for the slightest hint of new details, which were scarce in coming.

On the Fox News Channel, Bill O’Reilly led his February 8 show by claiming not to understand the fascination with Smith, who he called “a tabloid queen…I’m looking at her and seeing a media creation.”

O’Reilly’s guest, entertainment writer Jeanne Wolf, responded that Smith’s fame was largely a result of her rags to riches (or at least contested riches) story that was “part of the American fantasy.”

That fantasy, however, was explored more heavily on cable news than elsewhere. For the week, her death consumed 21% of cable airtime--more than any other story. In the programs. it examined accounted for about 50 reports or stories on the February 8 and 9 prime-time shows.

Nowak’s story, in contrast, was spread widely through the Index’s five media sectors (in online, network TV, and radio, the astronaut generated more coverage than the bombshell).

A look at the coverage also suggests that some elite mainstream media outlets were more comfortable giving major play to the astronaut story than to Smith’s soap opera. Unlike a number of papers, the New York Times did not yield space on page 1 for Smith’s death. And though it was covered on all three major networks, the story was positioned well down in the evening newscasts. Nowak’s arrest, conversely, was the first story on the CBS newscast and the second story on NBC’s on February 6. It also made PBS’s “NewsHour.”

On February 8, NBC anchor Brian William’s momentarily teased Smith’s demise at the top of the newscast before moving to an interview with his network colleague, Tim Russert, who had just testified in the Scooter Libby trial. When Williams finally got to the Smith piece about 10 minutes later, he added a touch of moralizing about one of those stories the media feel compelled to both cover and apologize for.

“This may say a lot about our current culture of celebrity and media these days, when all the major cable news networks switched over to non-stop live coverage this afternoon when word arrived that Anna Nicole Smith had died,” he said, a bit disapprovingly.

Even in a week of such Anna Nicole mania, the war in Iraq remained a media priority. The debate over Iraq strategy was the biggest story for the fourth time in six weeks. Yet the situation on the ground in Iraq (at 10%) generated its highest level of overall coverage and was the leading story in both the newspaper and online sectors.

Coverage of that subject was fueled by the horrific February 3 Baghdad bombing that took more than 130 lives as well as questions being raised about the continuing loss of American helicopters flying over Iraq (which included a new video of insurgents shooting down a chopper.) The presidential campaign was a top five story for the fourth straight week. The big news was that Republicans finally attracted as much media attention as their Democratic rivals thanks to Rudy Giuliani’s Feb. 5 statement of candidacy. While leading in GOP polls, Giuliani triggered plenty of coverage wondering whether his views on issues such as abortion and gay rights were too liberal for the Republican Party base.

And for the fourth time in six weeks, bad weather—this time mostly in the east—was a top 10 subject, finishing sixth at 3%. But neither heavy snowfall nor numbing freezes packed the power of the tabloid tornado that swirled around Anna Nicole Smith last week.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Primary links

News Index

Note: On Tuesday, March 6, the capture of the web sites in our sample was conducted at 1:00 pm ET instead of the normal time of between 9:00 and 10:00 am ET.

Note: Due to a technical error in recording, a Friday daytime program on CNN replaced the MSNBC daytime program that was supposed to be rotated into this week's sample.

Note: Due to a technical error, a segment of the Ed Schultz radio program from February 6 was not coded as part of this week's sample.