{"id":90645,"date":"2007-05-25T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2007\/05\/25\/iraq-dominates-pejs-first-quarterly-nci-report\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:15:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:15:41","slug":"iraq-dominates-pejs-first-quarterly-nci-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2007\/05\/25\/iraq-dominates-pejs-first-quarterly-nci-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq Dominates PEJ\u2019s First Quarterly NCI Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Quarterly Report of the PEJ News Coverage Index Spring 2007<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The war in Iraq has dwarfed all other topics in the American news media in the early months of 2007\u2014taking up more than three times the space devoted to the next most popular subject. But only a portion of this has focused on the state of things in Iraq itself, and even less about the plight of Iraqis and the internal affairs of their country, according to a new study of the American news media.<\/p>\n

The majority of the war coverage, 55%, has been about the political debate back in Washington. Less than a third, 31%, has been focused on events in Iraq itself. And about half that coverage has been about American soldiers there.<\/p>\n

In all, just one in six stories about the war has been focused on Iraqis, Iraqi casualties or the internal political affairs of their country, the report finds, while more than eight in ten have focused primarily on Americans or American policy.<\/p>\n

These are some of the findings drawn from the first quarterly report of the Project for Excellence in Journalism\u2019s News Coverage Index<\/a>, a weekly content analysis of a broad cross-section of national news media.<\/p>\n

The findings, among other things, show how the Iraqi war hangs over the presidency of George W. Bush and all other political activity in Washington. They also suggest the extent to which the U.S. media is covering the war from Washington, and with a U.S.-centric lens. This may be understandable given Americans\u2019 intense interest in resolving the conflict\u2014and given the difficulties of covering the war on the ground. One question is whether Americans are learning everything they need to evaluate the state of affairs in Iraq and what would happen if American troops left.<\/p>\n

Beyond Iraq, only one other story stands out above any others\u2014and the war even looms as part of it. The presidential campaign of 2008, has received startlingly heavy coverage even though key primaries are nine months away, and the general election won\u2019t occur for nearly a year and a half. The campaign has taken up 7% of the newshole so far this year, nearly twice the amount of the next most heavily covered story not related to Iraq. And in that, coverage of Democrats outweighed that of Republicans by roughly three-to-one.<\/p>\n

These findings are derived from a quarterly look at data from the weekly PEJ News Coverage Index, a research initiative by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that began in January. The Project\u2019s weekly NCI, which examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets<\/a> from five sectors of the media, 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 methodology<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But there are limits to what can safely be interpreted from the data on a weekly basis. In quarterly segments, it is possible to compare channels, timeslots, TV programs and newspapers, and to probe coverage of particular stories and topics much more deeply.<\/p>\n

Among other findings from the first 90 days of the year:<\/p>\n