Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
With the Virginia Tech shootings and Don Imus controversy beginning to fade into the news background, a couple of very familiar subjects commanded the most media attention last week. And Arizona Senator John McCain managed to find himself in the middle of both stories.
The biggest stories last week were driven by Republican and Democratic presidential debates, the apparent defeat of the compromise immigration bill, and an increasing war of words between the United States and Russia. But the tale of one celebrity’s interrupted incarceration generated a lot of late-week coverage.
The debates over immigration policy and Iraq war strategy were the most popular topics on cable and radio talk shows last week. The 2008 presidential race also attracted lots of attention, again. But two nasty political tiffs got on the talkers’ radar screen as well.
The war in Iraq eclipsed all other news in the first three months of 2007. The 2008 presidential race was the next biggest story, and most of that was about Democrats. These are among the findings in PEJ’s first quarterly report of its News Coverage Index, which allows us to probe the data more deeply than we can on a weekly basis.
Connected but Hassled: Many in this group have invested in a lot of technology, but the connectivity is a hassle for them. This group of older technology users in many ways represents the average when it comes to consumption of information goods and services. However, when focusing on use of information technology and attitudes about […]
The Attorney General faced a grilling from Congress, the Supreme Court weighed in on abortion rights, hundreds were slaughtered in a single day in Iraq, and a vicious storm wreaked havoc on the East Coast. But each of those events last week was completely overshadowed by the media’s non-stop coverage of the horrific events that unfolded on the campus of Virginia Tech.
The jury has spoken in the perjury and obstruction trial of Scooter Libby that so intimately involved the journalism profession itself. We know the vice-president’s former top aide was found guilty. But who and what else did the media implicate in its post-verdict coverage?