Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Dennis Kucinich’s call to impeach Vice President Cheney made nary a blip with the general media last week but it was a big story on in the talk media, especially on the left side of the talk radio dial. Meanwhile the many angles of the 2008 campaign gave everyone grist to talk about.
With the exception of the war in Iraq, international affairs tend not to generate major media interest. But General Pervez Musharraf’s Nov. 3 declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan proved to be a dramatic exception to that rule—and there may be several disquieting reasons why.
Thanks in part to the Democrats’ spirited debate in Philadelphia, last week was the biggest week of the year for the presidential campaign in the universe of radio and cable talk shows. The main course was the Democratic front runner who got carved up by hosts and pundits of various political stripes.
The presidential race was easily the biggest story in the media last week. But while much of the coverage focused on the attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Democrats’ Drexel University debate, the press also reassessed several other candidates.
The disaster in Southern California dominated the conversation in the talk show universe last week. Not every host played the story the same way. But for some the search was on for bad guys—with FEMA and environmentalists getting caught in the crosshairs.
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.
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.
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.
What did last week’s flare up of violence in Pakistan, the scary news about a deadly “superbug,” and the ideological skirmishes among presidential hopefuls have in common? They were all top stories, but each seemed more suited for a different media sector.
The debut of Fred Thompson as a GOP debater helped make last week the second-biggest week of the year in the talk show universe for the 2008 presidential campaign. But so did a talk brouhaha over a more tangential topic involving the debate. Also, conservative Michael Savage lets a conservative pundit have it.