Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

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Journalism

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    The Debate over Iraq Policy Dominates the News

    President Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq, and the reaction from Capitol Hill to Baghdad, overwhelmed virtually every other event in the media last week. The only non-Iraq stories to crack PEJ's News Coverage Index Top 5 last week were the Democrats in Congress and U.S. military strikes in Somalia.

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    Democrats in Congress Top the Week’s News

    Nancy Pelosi's swearing in as the first female Speaker of the House turned the Congressional transfer of power into the top story of the inaugural edition of PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index. Gerald Ford's funeral, the policy debate in Iraq, and Saddam Hussein's hanging also were among the top stories in the American news media the first week of 2007.

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    Will the Times Pull the Plug on its Ombudsman?

    More than three years ago, in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, the New York Times announced it would hire its first-ever public editor or ombudsman to act as an independent monitor of the paper. Now a published report raises the issue of whether the Times is thinking about eliminating the position. Such a decision would likely reverberate throughout the newspaper industry. What are Times officials thinking?

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    From Charles Lindbergh to … You

    Some critics have assailed Time magazine’s choice for 2006 Person of the Year in recent days, calling the editors’ selection of “You” with a mirror on the cover gimmicky. But this wasn’t the first unconventional choice for Time’s honor – or the first time a group of people was selected. PEJ takes stock of Time’s past Persons of the Year from 1927 on.

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    The Snow Effect

    What difference has Tony Snow made since becoming President George W. Bush’s press secretary? The President has been more accessible, for one thing. Tony Snow, it turns out, also talks more than his predecessor, Scott McClellan. A PEJ analysis suggests that in his regular give-and-take with the White House journalists, White House Q&A sessions are wordier and longer with the former TV and radio talk host at the helm.

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    Are Sirius and XM Headed for the Altar?

    It’s hard to know whether the universe of satellite radio companies is about to be cut in half. Is Sirius Radio boss Mel Karmazin’s talk about a merger between his company and XM Radio simply chatter or a prelude to a deal? Any union of the two intensely competitive satellite radio services would have to pass regulatory muster. Here’s a look at how the two satellite radio services stack up.

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    The Whole World is Reading

    A two-year-old experiment in shrinking the global village, Global Voices features bloggers who often write about parts of the world that are ignored by the mainstream media. In this PEJ interview, co-founder Ethan Zuckerman talks about the promise of the blogosphere and some of the problems with traditional journalism.

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    Headlines of Several Minds on Iraq Report

    What was the treatment of the eagerly awaited Iraq Study Group report across the nation's front pages? To find out, PEJ looked at nearly 200 headlines from Dec. 7, the day after its release. While there wasn’t much good news to tout, these editors seemed almost evenly divided over whether to highlight the report’s critique of the administration or its prescription for change in Iraq.

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    Do You Know What’s on Your TV News?

    There’s a battle brewing over whether the government should regulate the use of video news releases—prepackaged segments often produced for commercial clients—that look like news reports and sometimes appear on local TV newscasts. This PEJ backgrounder examines the dispute between television industry representatives and their critics.

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    The Times Wins a Straw Poll

    What are the best newspapers in America? The question used to be hotly debated. But when Poynter.org readers were asked to weigh in recently there was tepid response. Does that reflect a stagnating newspaper industry? We offer the results of that effort here. But maybe the more interesting, or at least refreshing question, is what are the best news web sites.