Articles

Presidential campaign coverage rises, war coverage falls

Ethics Newsline
Institute for Global Ethics
August 20, 2007

Study finds that Fox News covered the war only half as much as its rivals, while MSNBC spent twice as much time on presidential campaign as its rivals

From the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

"The 2008 Presidential campaign -- with its crowded field and accelerated timetable -- emerged as the leading story in the American news media in the second quarter of 2007, supplanting the policy debate over Iraq. And the once lopsided gap favoring Democrats over Republicans in campaign coverage became more balanced, according to a new study of the U.S. media....

"...These are some of the findings drawn from the second quarterly report of the Project for Excellence in Journalism's News Coverage Index, a weekly content analysis of a broad cross-section of American news media.

"Another major change in the period from April through June of 2007 was that press coverage of the war in Iraq declined markedly. Together the three major storylines of the war -- the policy debate, events on the ground, and the impact on the U.S. homefront -- filled 15% of the total news hole in the quarter, a drop of roughly a third from the first three months of the year, when it filled 22%.

"That decrease resulted largely from a decline in coverage of the Washington-based policy debate, which fell 42% from the first to second quarter, once the Democrats failed to impose timetables in legislation funding of the war....
"Among the findings in the second quarterly report of the PEJ's News Coverage Index:

• "After Democrats received more than twice the coverage of Republicans in the first quarter of the year (61% to 24%), coverage evened out in the second quarter. Democrats received 42% of the coverage versus 41% for Republicans. That Republican gain came largely from a one month surge in May....
• "There continue to be clear differences in the news judgments of different cable channels. As in the first quarter, the Fox News Channel devoted roughly half as much coverage to the war (8%) than its rivals, CNN (18%) and MSNBC (15%). On the subject of the presidential campaign, MSNBC stood out, providing more than twice the percent of airtime of either competitor....
• "The Virginia Tech campus massacre that claimed 33 lives was the biggest story for any given week so far this year. It accounted for 51% of all coverage April 15-20. But the media's attention to the story was fleeting: by the end of April, coverage had virtually disappeared. The policy debate in Iraq was the second most covered event of the year so far the week the president announced the 'surge.' Don Imus' firing was the third most heavily covered story of the year in any given week...."

For more information, see: Full press release and topline data, Aug. 20 -- New York Times, Aug. 20 -- AP, Aug. 20.

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