Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
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.
A backlash against columnist David Broder’s suggestions for Obama united bloggers last week while and Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear got mixed reviews.
The internet is a regular news source for a majority of Americans – 57% regularly get news from at least one internet or digital source. Over the past several years, there has been a rise in the use of more traditional online technologies, like search engines, and a proliferation of new technologies, like news applications […]
As the media landscape shifts, where can people turn for coverage of local news subjects, particularly government and public affairs? A new study conducted by a team of Michigan State University researchers, examines 175 communities and finds the majority of news about local government still comes from newspapers. But in many cases it is weeklies not dailies providing the most coverage. PEJ offers a summary of their findings.
Summary of Findings About two-thirds of the public sees coverage of this year’s elections as focused primarily on strategy and conflict rather than candidate positions, while a comparable percentage says the 2010 congressional elections are more important than most. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say news coverage of politics makes them angry. Still, few (36%) say election […]
Summary of Findings As the nation marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks last week, many in the public and the media focused more on current tensions over Islam in America – most notably plans by a Florida pastor to burn copies of the Koran. Nearly two-in-ten (17%) say they followed the […]
The mainstream media offer the American public a divided view of how information technology influences society, according to a new PEJ study. Messages such as technology making life easier often vie with concerns about privacy and safety. How do the media portray technology? Which companies get the most coverage? Do social media and blogs treat the subject differently than traditional media? A year-long study of technology coverage answers these and other questions.
Thanks to polls, prognosticators and personal attacks, the congressional election cycle galvanized the news media last week. The economy finished as the No. 2 story, with the foreclosure crisis once again driving the narrative. And a noteworthy news industry firing, that of NPR’s Juan Williams, triggered an impassioned journalistic and political debate.
The 2010 NCI data set totals 52,614 stories: 5,626 newspaper stories, 7,818 online stories, 13,016 stories from network television, 17,087 stories on cable news, and 9,067 stories from radio programs.