Disasters & Accidents

Senior Research Fellow Deborah Fallows reports from China on how the earthquake recovery is portrayed on TV and on the internet.

(Read on for an account of how blogs, Twitter, and Google provided news coverage in China this week.)

While the internet proved to be a faster and more varied source of news about the disaster, Chinese television reports have shown an unprecedented absence of censorship: "The faces in these productions tell everything. The soldiers are young; the grief is raw; the eyes are desperate."

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.

In the second quarter of 2007, the presidential campaign supplanted the debate over Iraq as the No. 1 story in the media. Barack Obama overtook Hillary Clinton as the candidate getting the most attention. And Republicans began to catch up with Democrats in exposure. PEJ offers a 2nd quarter report on the media.

9% of online Americans made donations on the internet to relief efforts and 7 million set up their own hurricane relief efforts using the internet.

Summary of Findings The public overwhelmingly supports the Hurricane Katrina rebuilding aid already approved by Congress. Going forward, however, as many Americans worry that the government will spend too much on hurricane relief as say it will spend too little. And while Katrina’s potential impact on the budget has become a major issue in Washington, […]

Much has been made of the surge of emotion among journalists who covered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and to a lesser degree Hurricane Rita.

As the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort unfolds along the Gulf Coast, there has been considerable speculation about the disaster’s possible impact on fundamental public attitudes on such questions as the role of government, the plight of the poor and the extent of racial progress in the U.S. On the left, some have expressed the hope […]

Summary of Findings With hearings on the nomination of John Roberts beginning today in Washington, a growing number of Americans say that Roberts should be confirmed as chief justice. In polling conducted over the weekend by the Pew Research Center, 46% expressed support for Roberts’s confirmation, up from 35% in a poll conducted last week. […]