Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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The United States enjoys a largely positive image among Indians: solid majorities have a favorable view of the U.S., express confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama, and believe the U.S. takes India’s interests into account when making foreign policy. Moreover, Indians assign higher ratings to the U.S. than to other leading powers. About half (51%) […]
In the depths of the 1981-1982 recession, Americans were far more displeased with their president and his policies than were their predecessors during the Great Depression, more so even than in today’s high-unemployment economy.
The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the death of Elizabeth Edwards both received substantial coverage, but it was the reaction to a compromise on the expiring Bush-era tax cuts that really galvanized the press last week.
Extremist groups Hamas and Hezbollah continue to receive mixed ratings from Muslim publics. However, opinions of al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, are consistently negative; only in Nigeria do Muslims offer views that are, on balance, positive toward al Qaeda and bin Laden.
The agreement on tax cuts between President Obama and GOP leaders led to a complex online conversation which revealed deep tensions within one party. The WikiLeaks controversy, a hot topic for the second week in a row, drew a more unified response. And on YouTube, a tragic stunt on live German television drew worldwide attention.
Three stories topped the news last week—the economy, the aftermath of the 2010 midterms and the president’s trip to Asia—and all three involved narratives that were not positive for President Obama. The week’s other top stories included a cruise gone awry and a former president resurfacing on the media circuit to pitch his new book.
No other event or story generated much attention as the battle for Congress was finally resolved, accounting for more than half of last week’s coverage. Once the voters had spoken, the media pivoted from polls and predictions to post-mortems and projections about the new political landscape. And not surprisingly, President Obama was at the center of the narrative.
Thanks to some bruising campaigns and controversial remarks, the 2010 midterms led the mainstream news agenda again last week as an outspoken gubernatorial candidate moved to the center of the narrative. And the happy conclusion to the story of the 33 trapped Chilean miners, captured on live television, finished as a strong No. 2 subject.
Executive Summary Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the […]