Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Publications

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    “California Burning” is the Second-biggest Story of 2007

    The wildfires that raged in Southern California last week featured numerous tales of bravery, tragedy, and plenty of missing pets. But one reason the disaster became such a major story was that journalists couldn’t resist raising the comparison—fair or not—with the 2005 fiasco on the Gulf Coast.

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    The Invisible Primary – Invisible No Longer

    How have the news media covered the early months of the 2008 presidential election? Which candidate enjoyed the most exposure, which the best, and which the worst? With the race starting so early, did the press leap to horse race coverage from the start? A study by PEJ and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center has answers.

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    Public Tunes out Ellen DeGeneres Controversy

    Summary of Findings News about the dangers of an antibiotic-resistant staph infection (MRSA) caught the public’s attention last week. More than a quarter of Americans paid very close attention to this story and 18% listed it as the single news story they followed more closely than any other — placing it at the top of […]

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    Turkey and Its (Many) Discontents

    by Brian J. Grim, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and Richard Wike, Pew Global Attitudes Project Earlier this month, Turkey threatened to curtail U.S. military access to Turkish bases and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations. These actions came in response to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s approval of a resolution […]

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    The Talk Hosts Get Personal

    Three of the top-10 topics on the cable and radio talk shows last week directly involved the hosts themselves. They included an argument over the SCHIP health care program, the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq, and the strange case of Randi Rhodes.

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    The Free Exercise Clause and the Parameters of Religious Liberty

    The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that the federal government will respect the “free exercise” of religion. But the precise meaning of “free exercise” and exactly what constitutes an infringement of this right are not clear-cut. At the heart of the debate is one basic question: Do individuals or groups professing sincerely held […]