The media scrambled last week as authorities arrested a suspect in the Times Square terror case, the Gulf oil spill grew more ominous, Wall Street went briefly into free fall and floods took a deadly toll in Tennessee. All of which left little room for coverage of a crucial overseas election.
George Mason University Professor Peter Mandaville, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation, and Maha Azzam of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House discussed key findings of a Pew Forum study containing profiles of some of the oldest, largest and most influential Muslim groups – from the Muslim Brotherhood to mystical Sufi orders and networks of religious scholars.
With the legislative process stalled in recent weeks, the media turned away from health care reform. But President Obama’s much-awaited February 25 summit meeting changed that. Meanwhile, a modicum of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill fueled coverage of the economy and a mea culpa before Congress put Toyota in the headlines.
The U.S. economy topped the news agenda in a week that included a major summit in Washington D.C. an eruption that wreaked havoc with global travel and a series of Tea Party protests. Meanwhile, coverage of the once raging health care issue has tapered off dramatically since the legislation was signed into law.
The controversial immigration law in Arizona sparked significant interest in the blogosphere last week, as it did in the mainstream media. But the social media also focused intently on a story that was largely absent in the MSM—the question of whether we on earth should consider E.T. a friend or foe.
Amid good news on jobs, storms in the Northeast and the arrest of a radical Christian militia, the news agenda was more unusually diverse last week with eight different stories gaining substantial attention.
This week’s News Coverage Index examines the agenda in one media sector—daily newspapers. And it reveals that the unanswered questions about the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner were still dominating coverage a week after the event occurred. Meanwhile, the state of the economy was the week’s second-biggest topic.
The study, How News Happens, involved several different methodological phases. All aspects of the analysis were performed in house by PEJ staff researchers. Identifying the Media Universe The first step was to identify all the local media outlets in the Baltimore, Md. metropolitan area. This occurred in the summer of 2009. For outlets with multiple […]
