News Content Analysis

Was it a tease, a trial balloon, or a trivial matter? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to shed his GOP label sure had the media buzzing last week. And while dramatic events inside Iraq generated substantial coverage, the policy debate over the war has slipped onto the press back burner in recent weeks.

The impassioned debate on the talk airwaves wouldn’t go away last week as the once-imperiled immigration bill appeared to get a new life. And that had some conservative hosts putting former GOP allies on their enemies list. The talkers were also more interested in HBO’s gang wars than the Hamas-Fatah battles.

The 30,000 employees of Private Security Companies currently operating inside Iraq represent a new element in modern-day warfare. They are armed, suffer casualties, are paid by the U.S. government, and perform tasks once done by the nation’s military. But a new study by PEJ reveals that for the most part, these forces have operated below the media radar.

Summary of Findings In spite of their general criticisms of the media, Americans have good things to say about the major broadcast and cable news networks. The public draws few distinctions among the news divisions of the big three broadcast networks. There is much less consensus about the major cable news networks. Nearly half of […]

It took Presidential intervention, but the changing fortunes of the controversial immigration reform legislation was the leading story last week. Still, U.S. domestic politics were almost overshadowed violence in the Mideast. And why did the ending of a cable series make the nightly news?

The race for the White House was the most popular talk show story last week and Paris Hilton’s unscheduled release from jail was also a hot topic. But the big news may have been the Senate’s failure to pass an immigration measure, an event that seemed like a victory for a number of talk hosts.

Summary of Findings Paris Hilton’s legal problems became a national news story last week. Coverage of Hilton being released from and then returned to jail filled 4% of the newshole, making it the fifth most heavily covered story of the week. Roughly a third of Americans (34%) said they followed news about Hilton very or […]

The biggest stories last week were driven by Republican and Democratic presidential debates, the apparent defeat of the compromise immigration bill, and an increasing war of words between the United States and Russia. But the tale of one celebrity’s interrupted incarceration generated a lot of late-week coverage.

As world leaders gather in Germany for the annual G-8 meeting, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur will be high on their agenda. Pew's latest surveys find nearly half of Americans believing the United States has a moral obligation to do something about the ethnic genocide there, and a modest plurality thinking the U.S. should send troops.

The cable and radio talk shows were buzzing about Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, and even Michelle Obama last week. And they were still on the offensive on the new immigration bill. But for all its many angles, the saga of the young tuberculosis-infected lawyer attracted only tepid interest.