The Gingrich Rise Fuels Campaign Coverage
One GOP candidate has not only soared in the polls recently, he’s become the focal point of news coverage as well. A presidential speech drove coverage of the week’s No. 2 story, the economy.
One GOP candidate has not only soared in the polls recently, he’s become the focal point of news coverage as well. A presidential speech drove coverage of the week’s No. 2 story, the economy.
Tensions drove Occupy Wall Street coverage to its biggest week so far and an interview with Jerry Sandusky ushered in a second week of major coverage of Penn State’s sexual abuse scandal.
Attention to the Republican nomination fight increased last week with Iowa looming and Gingrich and Romney locked in campaign combat.
With more and more partisans choosing up sides on the issue, the Occupy Wall Street protests continued to fuel economic coverage last week. Mitt Romney took front and center in the 2012 presidential campaign, and the unraveling of an Iranian plot on U.S. soil raised more questions than answers.
The economy remained the No. 1 story for the ninth consecutive week while the 2012 presidential race continued its recent spike in coverage last week. And dramatic developments regarding Syria and Libya drove Mideast coverage to its highest level in nearly three months.
After building for more than a month, the Beltway Battle over the debt ceiling exploded as a story last week, accounting for more than half of the newshole. No other story even generated double digit coverage in a week dominated by a single subject.
Coverage of the economy ballooned last week with the high stakes political skirmishing over the deficit and debt limit, while on the other side of the Atlantic the scandal enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s media empire generated a significant increase in media attention in the U.S.
The stalemate over deficit reduction and the entry of another candidate into the crowded 2012 presidential race made the economy and election the two leading stories last week. Meanwhile media attention to Afghanistan fell dramatically, highlighting the episodic and uneven coverage of that decade-old conflict.
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