Journalism

One is a longtime senator who may be driven from office by scandal. Another is a former senator who announced his intent to seek the highest office in the land. Both were target-rich environments for the talk shows last week and both took their share of lumps. This, plus Michael Savage’s memorable Pavarotti tribute.

The political skirmishing in advance of General Petraeus’ progress report made the Iraq debate the top story last week. And Fred Thompson’s entry helped generate coverage of the 2008 Presidential race. But a new video, a major arrest in Germany, and two mysterious men in Seattle proved why terrorism is still a major newsmaker.

It’s been a while since the debate over Iraq policy was the nation’s top talk show topic. But the Iraq doubters drove the suddenly re-ignited conversation on the airwaves last week. Meanwhile, the strange saga of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and his dog fighting operation proved a difficult topic to tackle.

Two different destructive storms struck the continent and even in the dog days of summer, the presidential race continued to attract significant media interest. But several factors—an intelligence report, a senatorial statement, and a presidential analogy—all combined to re-ignite the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq.

The departure of the Bush Administration’s most-polarizing adviser gave talk shows plenty to talk about last week, as hosts from the left and right assessed the White House tenure of Karl Rove. But even as the aide prepared to shuffle off to Texas, the campaign was on most hosts’ minds.

With the news split between stories like the Utah Mine collapse and the resignation of Karl Rove, the leading topic in the media last week was he 2008 campaign, but only barely. And by week’s end the nations’ economic turbulence was grabbing headlines.

The actual vote may be 15 months away, but a loaded campaign calendar helped make last week the biggest one so far for the 2008 presidential race in talk media. No other stories really came close. One of the biggest topics in all the talk: Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton.