Campaign Leads Again, But Pakistan is Big News
The Project for Excellence in Journalism did not issue a News Index report this week, but the data is available.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The Project for Excellence in Journalism did not issue a News Index report this week, but the data is available.
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism did not publish a full Weekly News Index report for December 23-28, 2007. PEJ is, however, making the data available.
All year long, Hillary Clinton has dominated the campaign conversation on the talk airwaves. And last week, signs that the Democratic battle for president might be tightening had many hosts talking up the idea of a Clinton swoon. Plus, Michael Savage on steroids. (Talking about them, not taking them.)
The unlikely surge of former Arkansas Governor helped generate the biggest week of coverage for the presidential campaign so far in 2007. But as Huckabee is learning, some media attention is more welcome than others. Plus, the Mitchell report turns steroid abuse in baseball into a front-page story—some might say at long last.
Thanks to Mitt Romney’s big speech on his Mormon faith, the presidential race was the biggest story of the week in the talk universe last week. And while the new intelligence report on Iran sparked a lively debate, the CIA’s destruction of two terror interrogation tapes didn’t generate much interest.
For most of the year, the American media have been far more preoccupied with the war in Iraq than with growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. But last week, a new intelligence report sparked a heated debate over policy toward the leadership in Tehran.
The Iraq policy debate re-emerged as the No. 1 story, replacing the campaign, in the third quarter, according to a detailed analysis of PEJ’s News Coverage Index. But terror fears, a troubled economy, and man-made disasters also grabbed the media’s attention. So too, did the three top newsmakers who ran afoul of the law.
The increasingly heated exchanges between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney helped make the race for the White House the top story last week in PEJ’s Index of the news. On the Democratic side, a former President generated a good chunk of the coverage, and it wasn’t all good. That, plus a football murder case.