By generating more coverage than any other candidate last week, and easily outdistancing his GOP rivals, Senator John McCain rode a media narrative of near inevitability last week. Plus, Senator Ted Kennedy becomes a major newsmaker.
The two leading Democrats once again attracted more coverage than any of their GOP rivals in the race for media exposure last week. But the GOP overall tipped the scales in what became a big boost for Mitt Romney, both in Michigan and in the media.
For most of the year, the American media have been far more preoccupied with the war in Iraq than with growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. But last week, a new intelligence report sparked a heated debate over policy toward the leadership in Tehran.
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.
While crime coverage may seem like a staple of our news diet, last week was actually unusual in that three frightening stories of random violence generated coverage—with two making the top-10 story list. When it comes to crime however, the media attention span is usually short-lived.
For years, journalists struggled to report on the activities the private security firms in Iraq, companies who functioned in some ways as private armies. But last week, when the story of one such company moved from the streets of Baghdad to the hearing rooms on Capitol Hill, the media shed more light on the mystery.
The general’s appearance before Congress last week was widely expected to be a pivot point in the political brawl over Iraq war policy. The media swarmed, but the story they told may help explain why David Petraeus’s testimony seemed, for now, to cement the status quo.
Whether silly political stagecraft or a sly legislative tactic, the Senate’s all-nighter helped make the Iraq policy debate the biggest news story of the week. At the same time, there were also ominous warnings on the terror front. And YouTube inserted itself smack into the middle of the 2008 campaign coverage.
It took Presidential intervention, but the changing fortunes of the controversial immigration reform legislation was the leading story last week. Still, U.S. domestic politics were almost overshadowed violence in the Mideast. And why did the ending of a cable series make the nightly news?
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