Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
There was much fanfare when the new Democratic-led Congress was sworn in this past January claiming it had an electoral mandate for change. Since then, the new House and Senate Democrats have had trouble making laws or influencing Iraq policy. But as an examination of the coverage indicates, they’ve been quite successful in generating news.
The battle in Iraq is still dominating the nation’s news coverage, but in different ways than it used to. While media attention on the political debate over troop strength has waned, a high-profile criminal trial and a riveting newspaper investigation have focused attention on different aspects of the controversial war.
Presidential politics and Iraq managed to attract their fair share of coverage last week. But an allegedly homicidal astronaut and a troubled pinup girl really commandeered the media’s attention. The coverage of the death of Anna Nicole Smith was cast as sociology but it had the intensity of voyeurism.
The deteriorating conflict in Iraq was still the leading story line in the news last week. But the media were also tested by a terror false alarm, a major campaign trail gaffe, lethal weather, and the tragic death of a great athlete, according to the PEJ News Coverage Index.
Remarks of Andrew Kohut to the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight
The Aggregators With events moving quickly, aggregator sites such as Google, in theory, might seem a perfect place to get a handle on everything that is happening. After all, they can provide users with material from any number of sources and are less burdened with trying to promote their own branded material, which might in […]