News Content Analysis

Summary of Findings News about an Atlanta man infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis drew a large audience last week. The saga of the man’s illness and his travels abroad was the second most closely followed news story of the week – trailing only the situation in Iraq. Nearly a quarter of the public […]

There was a grim milestone for U.S. troops in Iraq and one potential GOP presidential hopeful moved closer to making it official. But the biggest news last week was an international medical mystery with more plot twists than a novel and potentially serious implications for the nation’s security in an era of daunting man-made and natural threats.

Summary of Findings At this early stage of the 2008 campaign, about half of the public believes that press coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates has been fair. But there are sizable partisan differences in evaluations of campaign coverage. Notably, a plurality of Republicans believes the press has gone too easy on Democratic […]

The debates over immigration policy and Iraq war strategy were the most popular topics on cable and radio talk shows last week. The 2008 presidential race also attracted lots of attention, again. But two nasty political tiffs got on the talkers’ radar screen as well.

Interest in news about inflation at the pump goes beyond learning where to find the cheapest gallon and extends to impacts on the national economy.

Summary of Findings The rising price of gasoline replaced the Iraq war last week as the public’s most closely followed news story. More than half of the public (52%) paid very close attention to news about gas prices, and 27% said this was the single news story they followed more closely than any other. By […]

From Capitol Hill to a refugee camp in Lebanon to ABC’s investigative team, the Mideast and the war on terror thoroughly dominated the media last week. Meanwhile, a controversy of sorts erupted over how news outlets treated the results of a new survey of Muslim-American attitudes.

If Capitol Hill was divided over the compromise agreement on a new immigration bill, the talk show world seemed to answer with one unified voice. And that answer was “Boo!” Meanwhile, there’s continued unease about the makeup of the Republican presidential field, and Jerry Falwell’s death wasn’t that big a story.

The war in Iraq eclipsed all other news in the first three months of 2007. The 2008 presidential race was the next biggest story, and most of that was about Democrats. These are among the findings in PEJ’s first quarterly report of its News Coverage Index, which allows us to probe the data more deeply than we can on a weekly basis.

Summary of Findings While the national media divided its time last week among a host of major news stories, the public remained intensely focused on the situation in Iraq. Fully 36% of Americans paid very closely attention to events in Iraq and 35% said this was the news story they followed more closely than any […]