News Media Trends

Summary of Findings Hillary Clinton’s retraction of her claim that she came under sniper fire while visiting Bosnia in 1996 was one of the main campaign storylines last week. But the controversy over her statements did not resonate as widely as the furor over statements made by Barack Obama’s pastor earlier in March. Roughly four-in-ten […]

Democrats are finding out that being in the news isn’t necessarily good news. A week after Barack Obama was besieged by the Rev. Wright furor, Hillary Clinton’s memory and veracity came under fire. Does all this make John McCain the big winner?

Summary of Findings Barack Obama’s March 18th speech on race and politics is arguably the biggest political event of the campaign so far. Fully 85% of Americans say they heard at least a little about Obama’s speech, and most (54%) say they heard a lot about it. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama has been far and […]

In a week in which the campaign overwhelmingly dominated the talk airwaves, the hottest issue was Obama’s speech aimed at dampening the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. In the talk show universe, the response was impassioned, but the verdict was far from unanimous.

The tactical success of the surge and the tactical failures of the new Democratic Congress are among the reasons why the five-year-old conflict seems to have disappeared from the headlines. And then there are the competing demands of covering the most intriguing presidential campaign in recent memory.

John McCain and Hillary Clinton were reduced to relative obscurity last week. The media’s presidential campaign narrative instead focused on one overarching issue: could Barack Obama handle the controversy over his pastor’s racially inflammatory remarks?

Summary of Findings On the eve of Barack Obama’s major speech on race and politics, most Americans said they had heard at least a little about the videos showing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright making racially-charged statements to his Chicago congregation. At the time of the survey, however, there was greater public awareness of other recent […]

News remains an important part of what was once simply called radio. In many ways, indeed, the tradition of listening to the news — aural transmission is the original way people got news — is among the most enduring.

The financial crisis facing news organizations is so grave that it is now overshadowing concerns about the quality of news coverage, the flagging credibility of the news media, and other problems that have been very much on the minds of journalists over the past decade.

When it came to coverage, John McCain was a forgotten man compared with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But perhaps no news was good news for the GOP in a week during which the press highlighted some of the uglier divisions among Democrats.