News Index

The political skirmishing over U.S. strategy in Iraq and the embryonic 2008 campaigns of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were what was buzzing on cable and talk radio airwaves last week, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index.

Together, the Iraq debate (31%) and White House race (17%) combined to fill about half the time in our talk show universe January 28 to February 2.

That concentration was yet another demonstration of something we have found all year, the tendency of the talk show culture to seize on and magnify a few hot issues in the news--in effect to narrow and intensify the news agenda more than broaden it. Although the Iraq debate and 2008 campaign also generated the most coverage in the media generally (about a quarter of the newshole in PEJ's broader News Coverage Index), they made up nearly double that in the talk shows.

This week’s look at the talk show universe also suggests how big a role the idiosyncratic agenda of a given talk show and host play in determining some of the secondary issues in talk. Three of the top 10 stories—the immigration debate (3%), the death of columnist Molly Ivins (3%), and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s infidelity confession (1%)—were each discussed by just a single host, but each did so at some length. In the talk world, even more than the media generally, news is in the eye of the beholder.

The treatment of other top stories, and sometimes whether they got talked about at all, also seemed to reflect the political leanings of the person behind the microphone. The level of interest in the 2008 presidential race last week, for instance, reflected in part the intense focus on Hillary Clinton, particularly among conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The third biggest talk story, escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran (5%), in contrast, was a hotter topic for liberal radio hosts.

The discussion of the fifth biggest story, “Scooter” Libby’s perjury trial (4%), was driven by cable’s most left-leaning host, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

And in a week in which the big news was a UN report blaming humans for rising temperatures, global warming (sixth biggest talk story at 3%) was a favorite of conservative hosts attacking the theory.

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 2008 presidential campaign, with Democrats commanding most of the attention, were big stories in both indices this week. Joe Biden’s gaffe—referring to Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean”—easily made him the primary subject of the general media coverage. Yet the talk hosts, despite that faux pas, spent as much time on Hillary Clinton as they did on Biden.

“As we roll along—the stop Hillary express,” is how Sean Hannity opened his January 30 radio show, promising his listeners, “more evidence Hillary is mean” as well as “examples of how she has no principles whatsoever on anything.”

Global warming was another subject that conservatives wanted to discuss last week. Six of seven talk segments on that subject were hosted by either Limbaugh or Hannity (on his radio show or his Fox News Channel show with liberal partner Alan Colmes.) They effectively dismissed the idea that it is happening.

Liberals had their pet topics, as well, but that differed. And sometimes that differed by medium. The intensifying war of words between the White House and Iran was a much bigger topic on cable (about 31 minutes) than talk radio (about 3 minutes) last week. That’s largely because it was only the liberal radio hosts, such as Randi Rhodes, who weighed in on the subject.

The host of MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” seized on the ongoing “Scooter” Libby trial to voice displeasure with the Bush administration. On his January 29 show, the liberal Olbermann declared that the case was “implicating the administration in a purposeful attempt to discredit critics,” and “also implicating it in a near-Nixonian paranoia regarding what is said about the administration in public.”

The three Top 10 news stories from the main news index that the talkers skipped last week were news events that did not easily lend themselves to some politically oriented controversy—the Boston bomb hoax, the death of the racehorse Barbaro, and the deadly tornados in Florida.

Those stories were replaced on the talk airwaves by three subjects favored by individual hosts.

As has now become a familiar pattern, CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” was the only talk show on cable or radio to tackle the subject of immigration, which it did on three nights. The death of Molly Ivins was the eighth biggest talk show subject because Randi Rhodes devoted time on her February 1 radio show to pay tribute to the well-known liberal columnist.

It’s been a difficult few days for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. He publicly acknowledged having an affair with the wife of his campaign manager (and then subsequently announced he would get help for alcohol abuse.) This personal drama ended up on talk’s top 10 list thanks to conservative/contrarian San-Francisco-based radio host Michael Savage, who gave listeners his analysis of the situation.

“This is big stuff,” Savage said on his February 2 show. “This would be the equivalent of if President Bush had an affair with Karl Rove’s wife. This would be the equivalent of if Bill Clinton had an affair with Dick Morris’s wife.”

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

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

In a week that included a gloomy intelligence assessment, a battle that killed hundreds of Shiite fanatics, and more charges that Iran has U.S. blood on its hands, the deepening Iraq conflict again commanded much of the media's attention, according PEJ's News Coverage Index.

Iraq-related news filled more than a quarter of the overall newshole in the week from January 28 to February 2.

The top story was the internal debate over Iraq policy (15% of the Index newshole). The debate has led the way in three of the five weeks this year. Violence on the ground (third place at 6%) was the second part of the Iraq story. That was matched by allegations that Iran is increasingly involved in that bloodshed (also at 6%). It’s worth noting that the killing of more than 130 Iraqis in a February 3 bombing attack came after the Index deadline. The war was an even bigger story on television and radio than in print or online.

For the third week this year, the 2008 Presidential race was a top-five story (it was the biggest story in the previous week’s Index). This time it was the second leading story at 9%, thanks to controversial comments from Hillary Clinton and especially, Joe Biden.

With a highly touted UN report concluding that homo sapiens were “very likely” the cause of global warming, that subject made its first Index appearance as a top story (5%).

A look at last week’s news landscape also reveals the power of dramatic, breaking news to rearrange media priorities. The Feb. 2 tornados that took 20 lives in central Florida generated only one day of stories for this Index. But driven by non-stop cable attention, it still ended up as the ninth biggest story of the week at 3%.

The coverage of two other breaking stories on the top-10 list probably said as much about the media as about the subject matter itself. One was the intense (at least some consumers thought excessive) attention to death of Kentucky derby winner Barbaro (at 2%). The other was a bizarre false alarm in Boston that included many journalists among its victims (3%).

PEJ’s News Coverage Index, released every Tuesday, is an ongoing study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the American media. (See a List of Outlets.) The Index is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are and aren't covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) We believe it is the largest continuing systematic study of the media agenda ever attempted. (See About the News Coverage Index.)

Coverage of the presidential race last week—which was the heaviest on cable (13% of the air time)—was again dominated by Democrats. But it was not in a flattering way. Hillary Clinton made news with a suspicious rephrasing of a question. Asked how she would deal with evil world leaders, the former First Lady responded: “What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?” That provoked much laughter and later, her apparent denial that she was referring to her less-than-always-faithful husband.

But that remark paled next to the misstep that dominated coverage of Joe Biden’s January 31 presidential kickoff. After saying that Barack Obama was "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean," Biden launched a damage-control media tour that included a January 31 chat with “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart and a February 1 appearance with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

“I wasn’t making a historical statement. I was trying to compliment a colleague,” Biden told a sympathetic Matthews. “I sometimes say things inartfully.”

The encounter with a wisecracking Stewart was more lighthearted, but also more challenging for Biden. When the senator said he’d spoken to Obama in the wake of his remarks, Stewart quickly interrupted with a theatrical “I BET YOU DID,” as the audience roared.

At the same time Biden was digging himself out of a hole, the media was being sucked into the biggest Boston hoax since the infamous 1989 case in which Charles Stuart killed his wife but initially convinced the city and media that the assailant was a black man. Those tuning into CNN on January 31 saw near-breathless live coverage of a possible major terror plot that included shots of snarled Boston traffic, swarming law enforcement personnel, and a tense press conference by local officials.

Alas, the culprit was not Al Qaeda, but the Cartoon Network. When the suspicious packages proved to be part of a promotional campaign for the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” show, Boston was embarrassed, the mainstream media were duped, and Turner Broadcasting was out $2 million in restitution. (The press did relatively little to explain why this created panic in Boston, but not in the nine other cities where the Cartoon Network had placed similar devices.)

If there were any winners here, they may have been “new media” practitioners who figured this one out early. (One blogger, while noting the “the media has been going nuts all day in Boston,” quickly linked the suspicious devices to the cartoon.) The popular liberal blog Daily Kos summed things with the headline: “Morons in Boston.” By the end of the week, three clips related to the incident—including the bizarre press conference rantings of the two young men arrested —were among the most viewed YouTube videos.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the episode generated the most coverage in the online sector, where it logged in as the fifth biggest story at 6%.

The story that finished last on the top 10 list raised also raised questions—this time about the media priorities. On January 29, after a long battle with injuries suffered at the Preakness, the promising race horse Barbaro was euthanized. His demise was only a two-day story—all of the coverage occurred on January 29 and 30. But it made the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe and led the ABC evening newscast on January 29. (Barbaro got the most coverage, 4%, on network news.)

In a Washington Post Style section tribute on January 30, an “appreciation” of Barbaro was published above one for the late Rev. Robert Drinan, the former Massachusetts Congressman and anti-war activist, and the only Catholic priest ever elected to Congress. After getting some reader complaints about that decision, Post ombudsman Deborah Howell tackled the issue in her column, acknowledging that Drinan’s “appreciation should have been on top.’”

“That said,” she added, “the death of Barbaro was a compelling story.”

So apparently, was Super Bowl XLI, which came in as the seventh-biggest overall story and the third-biggest front-page newspaper story in this week’s Index. There are always some well-worn angles in the run up to the big game, including the over-hyped commercials and the extensive security precautions. But this year provided a different theme that drove some of the pre-game coverage—the first two African-American coaches ever to participate in the event.

“Milestone resonates beyond NFL: Matchup of black coaches carries social, emotional weight,” declared the headline on USA Today’s Feb. 2 front page story.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

In a week busy with a number of competing news stories, three subjects dominated the talk show universe, according to the PEJ Talk Show Index from January 21-January 26.

The debate over Iraq policy, the 2008 presidential race, and Bush’s January 23 State of the Union speech combined to fill nearly two-thirds of the air time on the cable and radio talk shows, continuing a pattern that has emerged in the first few weeks of the Index—that of a handful of stories getting most of the space.

In filling a distinctive niche, the talk shows seem to function as megaphone rather than as a reporter’s notebook. Hosts tend not to develop their own stories, but to cherry pick hot topics from the news menu that they can amplify and magnify. Although the same three subjects that led the Talk Show Index also attracted the most news coverage last week, they dominated talk far more—accounting for 63% of talk time versus 39% of the overall newshole. As has consistently been the case in recent weeks, the debate over Iraq strategy was the most discussed subject, filling 23% of the talk output.

But the big trend has been the growing interest in the 2008 campaign, which recently saw the entrance of two Democratic stars—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Two weeks ago, the race to succeed Bush was nowhere to be found on the talk Index. It surged to 11% in last week’s Index and has now doubled to 22%, very nearly overtaking the war debate.

The President’s speech accounted for somewhat less of the talkers’ time, 18%.

The Talk Show Index, which will be released every 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, which is released every Tuesday and measures the subjects covered in a week by 48 different outlets from five American media sectors.

The fourth biggest talk show story in the Index was Scooter Libby’s perjury trial, which at 4% lagged well behind the top stories. This outgrowth of the complex Valerie Plame case was a favorite of MSNBC hosts who openly wondered about the level of involvement on the part of Dick Cheney.

The continuing interest of two oversized cable talk personalities (CNN’s Lou Dobbs and the Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly) was responsible for the fifth and sixth biggest talk stories—the immigration debate, at 3%, and the kidnapped Missouri teens, at 3%. Neither of those stories made the top-10 list on the broader News Coverage Index for the week of January 21-26.

Two weeks ago, the debate over Iraq strategy occurred almost solely on the cable shows, with radio hosts largely opting out. But last week, it raged on both platforms.

One interesting bellwether was conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who often hews to the official party line. On January 25, Limbaugh blasted a Senate committee resolution opposing the “surge” by noting that “it happened the same day the same committee unanimously confirmed General Petraeus” as top Iraq commander. (Some “surge” supporters are arguing that the much-admired Petraeus, not the unpopular Bush, is the real author of that strategy.)

But Michael Savage—a conservative radio talker who is more contrarian than Limbaugh—took a dramatically different tack, angrily declaring on January 23 that “as long as it’s [someone else’s] son” that is fighting, “the blowhards in the radio are all for increased war.”

The talk show conversation about the 2008 presidential campaign last week, was virtually all-Hilary, all-the-time. (Senator John Kerry’s decision not to reprise his 2004 run attracted a little attention.) Of the 29 talk segments studied by PEJ, the former First Lady, who announced her candidacy on January 20, was a main subject in at least 21.

Conservative radio hosts Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage were eager to raise doubts about Clinton. But in what could perhaps be a reflection of ambivalence about her positions or of the dilemma of choosing between her and Barack Obama, liberal radio hosts were largely silent on her candidacy. (That includes the most left-leaning cable talker, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.)

Liberal talkers, however, particularly radio host Randi Rhodes, were willing to jump on the President’s State of the Union speech, which was a much more popular topic on radio (about 76 minutes of discussion) than cable (only 33 minutes) last week. Rhodes and fellow liberal talker Ed Schultz, for example, combined for three straight days of speech preview and critique.

No cable personality is more closely associated with a single issue than CNN’s Dobbs, whose hard-line views on immigration are a leitmotif of his show. Last week, he was responsible for 11 out of 12 talk segments on the subject

On his January 24 program—after a segment about the Tennessee National Guard being honored for avoiding a confrontation with infiltrators at the Mexican border—an incredulous Dobbs theatrically cocked his head and said: “Excuse me? Who’s giving them an award for withdrawing?”

The Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly was the only host last week to continue to devote time to the two kidnapped teens. A week earlier, O’Reilly ruffled feathers by appearing to take a hard line on the boy who had spent about four years in captivity, claiming: “The Stockholm Syndrome thing, I don’t buy it.”

On his January 24 show, O’Reilly revisited the issue and discussed a report—one he acknowledged he couldn’t confirm—that the boy had helped his captor kidnap another teenager. O’Reilly then reiterated his skepticism about ”Stockholm Syndrome” in a conversation with a guest who said the boy was more likely suffering from an “accommodation syndrome.”

Another subject that generated attention in the talk universe (seventh place at 2%) while failing to register on our broader Index of news coverage was the controversy over Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Some critics have accused Carter of being anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic. And though a hoped-for debate between Carter and Alan Dershowitz did not materialize during Carter’s January 23 appearance at Brandeis, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson did convene his own debate panel on January 26 to discuss whether Carter had damaged his legacy.

Making sure things didn’t end on too substantive a note, Carlson concluded a somewhat inconclusive segment by declaring: “I sort of feel sorry for [Carter] simply because he is so old.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

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

Three deeply intertwined subjects—the debate over U.S. strategy in Iraq, the speech defending that strategy, and the emerging campaign to succeed that speech’s author—finished in a virtual tie for the top story in the news last week according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index.

Together the three stories made up nearly 40% of the newshole in our Index of the news from January 21 to 26.

One other not-so-subliminal message in last week’s coverage is that of an increasingly dangerous and destabilizing world. Aside from Iraq, the top-10 stories last week included violent protests in Lebanon, escalating conflict in Afghanistan, and rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran. This marked the first time that four global hotspots made the Index’s top-10 list this year.

The Iraq policy debate, a dominant story all year, built momentum throughout the week. The coverage, totaling 13% of the newshole, was driven last week by a series of events—including a Senate committee resolution rebuking the president, the confirmation of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus as top Iraq commander, and Dick Cheney’s CNN comment characterizing the naysaying on Iraq as “hogwash.”

Media attention to the January 23 State of the Union address (also 13% of the newshole), by contrast, waned as the week wore on.

So did the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign (also 13% of the newshole). That story—the fifth biggest the week before—was fueled early on by Hillary Clinton’s media blitz, which included a series of network interviews. The media practically ignored the Republican challengers last week, even though two of them, Sam Brownback and Duncan Hunter, announced their entrance into the race.

The continuing bloodshed in Iraq—led by a lethal attack on U.S. troops by militants disguised as Americans—was the fourth most covered story (at 9%). And “Scooter” Libby’s obstruction and perjury trial finished fifth (3%), the media focusing largely on his lawyer’s claim that Libby was being sacrificed to protect White House political guru Karl Rove.

PEJ’s News Coverage Index, released every Tuesday, is an ongoing study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the American media. (See a List of Outlets.) The Index is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are and aren't covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) We believe it is the largest continuing study of the media agenda ever attempted. (See About the News Coverage Index.)

In a highly competitive week, three different subjects topped all five media sectors we study. The State of the Union was the biggest news online, at 17%, and on radio, at 23%. Iraq policy has continually proved to be a major TV story and was again, the leading story on cable news, at 20%, and network news, at 18%. The 2008 race for the White House was the biggest newspaper story, accounting for 17% of the front-page coverage.

All three top stories seem to reflect the growing convergence between the Iraq war and U.S. politics with a presidential election now visible on the distant horizon.

Given the torrent of leaks about the State of the Union, much of the coverage actually occurred before the president spoke. If there was a post-mortem that reflected a consensus of the media punditocracy it was a January 24 Boston Globe analysis that described a president who had to “tone down his rhetoric” and “dress his faltering presidency in a cloak of statesmanship.”

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on January 24, Vice-president Cheney struck a far more combative note than President had in his speech—and succeeded in generating significant discussion in the media. He dismissed talk of blunders in Iraq as “hogwash” and asserted that the “bottom line is that we've had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes.” At times, Blitzer had to defend himself against Cheney’s give-no-quarter demeanor, trying to justify the propriety of some questions, and the basis behind others.

The other top story of the week, the 2008 presidential campaign received its highest share of overall coverage to date, in this the fourth week of our Index. That was due primarily to Hillary Clinton’s January 20 entry into the race and her January 22 trifecta of interviews on all three evening network newscasts.

If the big Barack Obama question is whether America is ready for a black president, for Clinton it’s the gender issue. A piece on Paula Zahn’s CNN show wondering if “America [is] ready for a female commander-in-chief” show raised the tricky issue of an “image challenge” for a woman, who has been perceived as “not warm,” “cold” and “brittle” and “tough as nails.”

If you were a Republican trying to run for president last week, you were largely out of luck. Despite the entrance into the race of Republican hopefuls as Brownback on January 20 and Duncan Hunter five days later, it was the star power of Barack and Clinton dictating the coverage. There were 93 stories predominantly about Democratic candidates for president during the week compared to just seven that focused largely on the GOP contenders.

Two smoldering global conflicts that vaulted into the top 10 list reflect the diversity of international news presented in online media. The Lebanon clashes that are an outgrowth of the war between Hezbollah and Israel and which threaten Beirut’s pro-western government generated 6% of the online coverage, compared with 2% in the media overall. And the continuing NATO and U.S. battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan—which made news when the White House asked Congress to earmark $10.6 billion for that struggle—filled 5% of the online newshole (versus 2% overall).

A courtroom drama made the top-10 list in every media sector last week and cracked the top five in the full Index. The “Scooter” Libby trial—the latest chapter in the confusing case of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame—promises a bonanza of buzz in the Beltway, given the parade of Washington insiders expected to take the stand. But any concern that the trial was too much of insiders’ game to generate coverage seemed to vanish when, as CBS anchor Katie Couric put it, “there was a new twist’’ early in the proceedings.

That twist, as Couric explained on the January 23 CBS newscast, was Libby’s lawyer’s argument that “top White House officials wanted him to take the blame for the leak of a secret CIA agent’s name so they can protect Karl Rove, the president’s chief political strategist.”

The story that immediately followed the Libby report on CBS that evening was the death of E. Howard Hunt, the man who spent several years in prison for his role in the greatest scandal in American political history.

No one expects “Libby-gate” to approach Watergate. But with its glimpses into White House intrigue, it might be a big story for a few more weeks.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: Due to the President's State of the Union speech on Tuesday, January 23, some cable programming that evening was preempted.

Barack Obama’s move toward a formal White House bid last week may have unofficially kicked off the 2008 presidential campaign in the talk show universe, according to the PEJ Talk Show Index from January 14—January 19.

With the election still a daunting 21 months away, cable and talk radio hosts were much more fascinated with the prospect of an Obama candidacy than were the media overall. Talk shows devoted 11% of their air time to the subject, the second biggest topic of the week. (Hillary Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy January 20 should further stoke the talk show fires.)

A week earlier, the 2008 presidential contest wasn’t even among the top 10 stories in the talk show rankings.

The debate over President Bush’s “surge” policy in Iraq was the lead story, consuming 20% the talk show menu. But that represents an enormous plunge from the previous week when the subject commanded 48% of the air time. And the topic practically vanished from talk radio.

Of the 137 minutes of talk air time spent on the war strategy, only 13 of those came from the radio hosts. The reason for this is impossible to know, but one possibility is that conservative hosts do not want to spend much time on a subject that at the moment, does not tend to play well for the President.

The saga of the two kidnapped Missouri teens (7%), domestic anti-terrorism efforts (5%) and the new Democratic Congressional majority (5%)—subjects that attracted about the same level of general media coverage last week—completed the top-five story list.

The Talk Show Index, which will be released every 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, which is released every Tuesday and measures the subjects covered in a week by 48 different outlets from five American media sectors.

As we found in the first Index report, the talk show universe again took some of the biggest news items from the media world and gave them an even heavier chewing over. It was not so much adding new topics to the mix. The Iraq policy debate, for instance, got sizably more of the talk newshole than it did in the overall news media universe (20% vs. 14%). The fascination with the presidential race was even more striking. Talk gave the campaign more than double the attention the media generally did (11% vs. 5%).

Much of this chatter was speculation about a heavyweight matchup between the first woman and first black to have, potentially, a real shot at the White House. In talk radio, where Hillary Clinton and her husband have been lightning rods for 15 years, some of the early reviews weren’t great for the New York senator.

On his January 16 show, conservative talker Sean Hannity declared that “we got Barack Obama mania” and then noted that “some of the reaction to the Obama announcement from the liberal blogosphere [is] not good news for Hillary.”

On the liberal spots on the dial, former Democratic Congressional candidate Tony Trupiano (subbing for Ed Schultz on January 17), accused the media of doing a “misplaced job” of anointing Hillary as the frontrunner adding, “I’m not a big Hillary Clinton fan…Is Barack Obama then, the next in line?”

The talk shows did seize on some issues that slipped below the general media radar. For the second week in a row, for instance, the possibility of a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran made the top 10 talk rankings, finishing seventh at 3%. It was a subject briefly but pointedly broached by President Bush in his January 10 speech. And though much of the coverage elsewhere in the media has since refocused on the carnage in Iraq, the cable hosts haven’t been so quick to drop the Iran matter.

“Is the White House setting the stage for a war with Iran?” asked MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough bluntly on his January 15 show. His guests, Craig Crawford and Pat Buchanan, acknowledged that scenario might be real.

The debate over immigration policy was another subject bigger in talk than elsewhere, (the sixth biggest talk story at 3%). The discussion was fueled in large measure by a controversial case involving the incarceration of two U.S. border patrol agents who shot a suspected drug smuggler near the U.S.—Mexican border.

Two other top talk subjects—global warming (2%) and China’s shoot-down of a satellite in space (2%)—reflected the agendas of a few individual hosts. Rush Limbaugh’s skepticism about global warning single-handedly elevated that subject in the rankings. And CNN anchor Lou Dobbs’s alarm about the military implications of the Chinese action accounted for the huge majority of time devoted to that subject.

One story that attracted similar attention in the news and talk indices was the unfolding saga of the rescued teens in Missouri. The kidnapping drama got particularly intense coverage from Fox News Channel hosts. A good chunk of the speculation about the case related to “Stockholm Syndrome”—the phenomenon of a hostage identifying with his or her captor—as a reason why one of the boys did not escape during four years of captivity.

Here, two of the channel’s leading conservative prime-time hosts took quite different views. On the January 19 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity declared that “This kid was kidnapped. This was a victim here. It seems like people never heard of the Stockholm Syndrome.”

On his show four nights earlier, Bill O’Reilly told viewers: “The Stockholm Syndrome thing, I don’t buy it. I’ve never bought it. I didn’t think it happened with Patty Hearst and I don’t think it happened here.” His Fox colleague and guest on that show, Greta Van Susteren, disagreed, reminding O’Reilly that “this is a kid, Bill.”

After creating something of a firestorm with those remarks, O’Reilly revisited the subject on January 18, asserting that “the far-left smear web sites have vilified me for raising questions about the situation.”

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

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

The tale of two kidnapped teenagers, nature’s assault on California’s citrus crop, and another dose of “Obama-mania” competed with the Iraq crisis for the media’s attention last week, according to the PEJ News Coverage Index.

In the week of January 14-19, when President Bush hit the interview circuit to sell the “surge” plan and the UN reported more than 34,000 Iraqi civilian deaths in the year past, the war was again the leading topic in the news. When combined, the policy debate (the top story at 14%) and violence in Iraq (the fourth-biggest story at 6%) filled one-fifth of the total newshole.

That, however, represented a 50% drop-off from the previous week when Iraq news virtually obscured every other event. (The drop-off would have been even greater were it not for television.)

Several breaking and unfolding stories helped fill that void. They were led by the rescued Missouri boys (second on the main Index at 8%), a saga the press explored both for the ostensibly happy ending and the unanswered and sordid questions.

Vicious storms that wreaked havoc with California’s economy and killed scores in the heartland were the third-most heavily covered story (at 6%). And political rock star Barack Obama’s establishment of an exploratory committee was enough to make the 2008 Presidential race the fifth biggest story at 5%. (The weekend announcements by Sam Brownback, Bill Richardson, and most notably, Hillary Clinton, should keep that category sizzling this week.)

A look inside PEJ’s Index for the week also reveals how the priorities of individual hosts can affect the news agenda. CNN’s Anderson Cooper devoted extensive attention to the kidnapped boys’ story, helping transform it into an even bigger event on cable. His colleague Paula Zahn’s interest in the racially loaded Duke rape case launched that subject onto cable’s top five story list. And on a week in which it snowed in Malibu, Rush Limbaugh’s skepticism about global warming made that subject a top-five radio story.

PEJ’s News Coverage Index, released every Tuesday, is an ongoing study of the news agenda of a wide swath of the American press, measuring the topics covered in 48 different outlets from five sectors of the American media. (See a List of Outlets.) The Index is an attempt to provide an empirical look at what the media are and aren't covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.) We believe it is the largest continuing study of the media agenda ever attempted. (See About the News Coverage Index.)

The coverage patterns for the top two stories in the main Index also highlight the different priorities emerging among media platforms. Though the Iraq policy debate accounted for less than 10% of the coverage in the online, radio and newspaper sectors, for instance, it consumed far more on television (18% of cable news and 25% of network evening and morning news coverage). The level of coverage got a boost on January 16, when Bush defended his strategy in an interview with PBS anchor Jim Lehrer—which was picked up elsewhere and created even more focus on the war on PBS.

It was cable, in turn, that seized on the Missouri teens’ tale. The medium devoted 15% of its air time to that subject in our index, compared with 3% in newspapers and 1% on radio. That suggests that there is something to the impression that cable has elevated the media’s fascination with emotionally charged, true-crime cases, such as the Laci Peterson murder and the Natalee Holloway disappearance. One feature of this is a parade of analysts, observers and so-called experts, some of whom may have at best tangential knowledge of the story.

Cooper’s coverage of the Missouri case, for example, included an interview with Ed Smart, the father of teenager Elizabeth Smart whose 2002 abduction attracted massive media attention. “I think the one thing that’s so important is that these [Missouri] kids know it’s not their fault,” Smart told viewers in a soft, soothing voice.

Every sector except online treated the 2008 presidential campaign as a top-five story, thanks to the buzz surrounding Obama. Not all the coverage has been positive. Fox News Channel, for instance, picked up and ran wiith the story that Hillary Clinton had leaked word that Obama was educated at a radical Islamic madrassah as a child in Indonesia. Both camps denied the story as false and irresponsible.

What is undeniable is how the Illinois senator and New York senator have been inextricably linked in the coverage—even before Hillary’s announcement. On the Jan. 16 ABC newscast, correspondent George Stephanopoulos cited the three “big” advantages Obama had over Clinton: “He is the face of change.” He is “the only candidate who was against the war from the start.” And “he is going to cut into her support among African-American voters.”

If this kind of horserace coverage seems grossly premature, be warned there are presidential debates scheduled in New Hampshire on April 4 and 5. Yes, in 2007.

The bottom half of last week’s top 10 story list also included the conclusion of the Democrats’ 100-hour agenda in Congress (4%), the events surrounding the Martin Luther King holiday (2%), and the botched hanging of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother (2%).

The seventh place story at 4% was about U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. And that coverage took a twist on January 16 when MSNBC aired a discussion about whether the hit show “24”—in which agent Kiefer Sutherland tries to stop terrorists from detonating nukes—is an example of “fear mongering” that “benefit[s] the Bush administration.”

“The American people do know the difference between fact and fiction,” retorted Democratic strategist Michael Feldman, arguing that the program isn’t paying dividends for the administration.

Finally, there was a fight for the last spot on the main top story list between two Washington journalism stories. As the week moved on, the confoundingly convoluted Scooter Libby trial—expected to include testimony from such celebrity Beltway journalists as Tim Russert and Bob Woodward—dropped off the list. It was supplanted by tributes to the man who spent a career skewering the Washington culture—humorist Art Buchwald, who died on January 17.

An ABC obit of Buchwald showed a clip of him paying tribute to the president who was a columnist’s best friend, all the while turning 60’s political history on its head.

“We’re all grateful to Nixon,” Buchwald said. “He was our Camelot.”

Even posthumously, journalists still have Nixon to kick around.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

The nation’s cable and radio talk hosts were even more consumed with Iraq last week than the media generally, devoting nearly half their air time to dissecting and arguing about President Bush’s “surge” strategy, according to the inaugural edition of the PEJ Talk Show Index.

In the period from January 7 to January 12, the debate over Iraq policy accounted for an overwhelming 48% of the talk menu. When added with the second biggest story—the activities of the Democratic-led Congress (12%)—the top two subjects accounted for 36 minutes out of every hour of talk measured in our universe of talk programs.

The other subjects rounding out the top five list in the talk media were the prospect of armed conflict with Iran, events on the ground in Iraq, and the Malibu California wildfires that destroyed a few homes of the rich and famous.

The Talk Show Index, which will be released every Friday, is designed to provide an empirical look at which 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. 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, which is released every Tuesday and measures the subjects covered in a week by 48 different outlets from five American media sectors.

Certain subjects appeared to be more natural fodder for a talk show culture than we found in our broader News Coverage Index the week of January 7 through 12.

The top two stories were the same in both indices. But the talkers seized on the mainstream media's biggest stories and then spent even more time and energy hashing over them. They were not in significant degree adding new elements to the news agenda last week.

The debate over Iraq that consumed nearly half the talk time, for instance, accounted for markedly less, just a third, of the overall media coverage (34%). The new Democratic Congress also got more time on talk (12%) than overall (7%).

The talk hosts were also much more interested in the possibility of escalation with Iran (third place at 4%), a subject that finished 18th in the News Coverage Index of the media overall. Conversely, the talkers paid little heed to two subjects that made the News Coverage Index’s top 10 —aging soccer star David Beckham’s decision to play in Los Angeles for a cool quarter billion and Governor Schwarzenegger’s unveiling of a $12-billion California health-care plan.

What did the talkers have to say about the President's plan? In general, they reflected the core arguments of the political parties in the wake of the Preisdent's January 10 speech. Bush supporters pointed to an unfriendly media and argued that withdrawal was a recipe for defeat. Opponents pointed to the administration’s failures to date in Iraq and said that any further buildup would compound the already costly mistakes.

On January 11, for instance, the Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly started by assailing the “the usual left-wing suspects” in the media for being unfair to the president. O’Reilly then went to an interview with White House press secretary Tony Snow, with the host noting approvingly that “President Bush looks to me to be determined…he’s gonna do everything he can to prevent defeat.”

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann—emerging as a liberal counterweight to the conservative-leaning O’Reilly—offered a very different perspective on his January 12 show. Under the caption “Axis of Escalation,” Olbermann interviewed Richard Nixon’s counsel, John Dean, conjuring up memories of a disgraced presidency, the Vietnam quagmire, and of a possible battle between the White House and Congress over war-making power.

“Most Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee [are] saying they do not understand how the president’s plan can work,” declared Olbermann.

For those wondering whether the election of a Democratic-run Congress would re-invigorate conservative talk radio by providing fresh targets, the Index suggests the answer is yes. That subject was driven last week largely by conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who focused attention on Senator Barbara Boxer’s statement to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the unmarried Rice would not pay any personal “price” for the combat in Iraq. In a radio interview, Tony Snow quickly jumped into the fray, calling that exchange a “great leap backward for feminism.”

Bush’ statement in his January 10 speech that “we will interrupt the flow of support [into Iraq] from Iran and Syria,” was largely subsumed into broader Iraq coverage by most of the news media. But thanks to the intense interest of MSNBC hosts Olbermann and Chris Matthews, the prospect of hostilities spilling into Iran was topic number three on the Talk Show Index.

Matthews, whose tommy-gun cadence seems to lend urgency to virtually every subject, began the January 12 edition of “Hardball” by asking: “Is Bush trying to gin up a war with Iran?”

Immigration policy, which was the seventh- biggest topic in the Index at 3%, is the handiwork of one man. Lou Dobbs’s career has had several incarnations, but as the host of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” he is now “an evangelical opponent of liberal immigration laws,” in the words of a recent New Yorker profile. According to the Index, Dobbs devoted time to that subject on four shows last week. No other show in our talk universe devoted any time to it.

The mysterious odor hovering over Manhattan on January 8 finished eighth on the Talk Show Index at 2%. It got play only on talk radio, where some couldn’t resist the siren song of humor. “New Yorkers described the odor as foul, pungent, and overall, a vast improvement,” declared the announcer on the liberal Randi Rhodes show.

And even the freewheeling talk show culture couldn’t justify making the ongoing Donald-Trump Rosie O’Donnell feud a top story. It finished 11th at 1%, perhaps proving that it was too hard to distinguish the protagonist from the villain.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index

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

The debate over what to do next in Iraq thoroughly dominated the news landscape last week, according to the PEJ News Coverage Index.

In the second week of the new year (January 7-12) Iraq policy filled 34% of the overall newshole and was the top story in all five media sectors – newspapers, online, network TV, cable and radio. That was followed by events in Congress and Somalia, and two other Iraq-related stories, but none of these even reached double digits in the main Index.

In a week of deadly serious events, there was still a California-sized helping of celebrity journalism as well. The Malibu wildfires were the sixth-biggest story largely because one of the destroyed homes belonged to “Three’s Company” star and ThighMaster pitchwoman Suzanne Somers. That overshadowed an event that affected millions more Californians, the unveiling of Governor Schwarzenegger’s $12 billion health care plan, which finished in tenth place. (The health care story was even topped by news that fabulously famous British soccer star and Posh Spice husband David Beckham had accepted an Alex Rodriguez-like $250 million to play in Los Angeles. Beckham was the seventh biggest story, with cable paying the most attention.)

The PEJ’s News Coverage Index, released every Tuesday, is an ongoing study of the news agenda of a wide swath of the American press, measuring the topics covered in 48 different outlets from five sectors of the American media. (See a List of Outlets.) The Index is an attempt to provide an empirical look at what the media are and aren't covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. We believe it is the largest continuing study of the media agenda ever attempted. (See About the News Coverage Index.)

A week earlier, thanks to the January 4 swearing-in ceremonies, the Democratic takeover of Congress was the biggest overall story. But last week, as those Democrats got down to the business of governing and cast votes on the minimum wage and Medicare drug prices, Congress slipped to a distant second (at 7%).

The third biggest story, at 5%, was the dramatic U.S. military attack in Somalia. That story was fueled by reports—later debunked—that the air strikes had killed some of Al Qaeda’s most wanted.

The reason Iraq policy overwhelmed the news last week was the President’s January 10 speech committing about 22,000 more soldiers to the conflict. While the substance of his proposals were well known, the political fight that it promised dwarfed every other event in the news. When combined with two other Iraq related stories—events on the ground in Iraq (in fourth place at 4%) and stories about the homefront (fifth place at 2%)—coverage of the increasingly divisive Iraq war accounted for 40% of the media menu.

The Iraq policy debate was an even bigger story on network TV (43 %) and cable (41%), and received its biggest play on radio where it accounted for 46% of the coverage and was fanned by talk hosts on both sides of the political spectrum.

On her January 10 show, for instance, liberal talker Randi Rhodes aired a movie-teaser bit in which a gravelly voiced announcer declared: “Tonight, don’t miss the most anticipated blockbuster of the year. It’s George W. Bush in ‘surge,’ – the escalation…From the same people who brought you ‘stay the course.”’

Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh on the same day angrily accused some media of actively trying to “purge the surge.” He characterized Democrats as the party with a “blame America attitude,” adding that “this is not how you defeat any military enemy, by the way, [by] exiting and retreating.” Bill O’Reilly that day was taking the same line as Limbaugh, predicting that the media would blast the president no matter what.

One element in Bush’s speech seemed to catch the media by particular surprise, a reference to more aggressive military action against Iran and Syria, raising the specter of a wider war.

NBC’s Brian Williams led his January 11 newscast by declaring that “much of the talk today was about fears of a new front in Iran.”

Those fears were fanned by the news, that broke hours after Bush’s address, of a U.S. raid in Northern Iraq that led to the detention of five Iranians. The next day, the buzz over Iran was loud enough that Tony Snow opened his White House press briefing by dismissing the idea of the U.S. preparations for war with Iran as “urban legend.”

While Iraq news led each media sector last week, there were some different priorities in the top story rosters. The Internet, which delivered a wider variety of international news, devoted the most coverage to the U.S. strikes in Somalia (11%) and was the only media sector to include the Ethiopian attack on Somalia Islamists in its top five list, at 5%. This is the second week the web proved the most broadly international medium.

The California health care proposal and the debate over immigration policy cracked the top five only in the newspaper sector.

Cable was the only sector to turn David Beckham’s impending U.S. arrival into a top five story, although the New York Times saw fit to play it above the fold on page 1 on January 12. And coverage of the stem cell issue—driven by reports that stem cells had been found in amniotic fluid and by the House vote to lift restrictions on research—earned a top five spot only in radio.

Two attention-grabbing events that streaked across the media landscape last week failed to generate “legs” and eventually fell off the overall top 10 story list—the odor in New York and the new iPhone. Even a Cisco lawsuit alleging trademark infringement failed to keep Apple’s eagerly anticipated January 9 unveiling of the iPhone atop the mainstream news agenda.

And cable watchers may have experienced some 9/11 déjà vu on January 8 when the Manhattan skyline appeared above headlines reporting a mysterious and powerful odor. Such images instinctively conjure up at least momentary fears of that infamous September morning. But by the next day, people were blaming New Jersey, rather than Al Qaeda, for the stench. (The tiresome Donald Trump/Rosie O’Donnell feud, which has now lasted more rounds than the Frazier/Ali trilogy, barely registered at less than 1% of the overall coverage.)

One breaking news event reported on January 12 quickly rose to make cable’s top 10 roster, and seems destined to become a bigger story this week. The heartening but still baffling tale of two disappeared Missouri teens—including one missing for four years—found safely in the same home has all the earmarks of a story just beginning to be unfold.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Note: Due to the President's speech on Wednesday, January 10, some cable programming that evening was preempted.