Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
April 2, 2007 by John Green, Senior Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life One of the largest religious groups in the U.S., representing about one-fifth of the electorate, white evangelicals are a strong Republican constituency. According to the 2004 exit polls, 78% of this group voted for George W. Bush while 21% supported […]
Summary of Findings Four years into the Iraq war, most Americans say they have little or no confidence in the information they receive – from either the military or the media – about how things are going on the ground. Fewer than half (46%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence […]
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.
In a week that marked the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein and the end of the Duke lacrosse scandal, the remarks of a cable and radio talk show host dominated the news media. The fall of Don Imus had just the mix of ingredients that tend to seize the media imagination.
The cable talkers didn’t have much to say about the State of the Union address, and the liberal hosts didn’t weigh in on Clinton’s presidential bid. But war and politics still managed to dominate the talk show agenda last week—even more so than the overall news coverage.
Section II: Images of Leading Candidates The public’s impressions of most of the top candidates for president remain relatively general and unfocused. Respondents who say they have heard of each candidate were asked “what comes to mind when you think of” the candidate. Significant numbers of people could not think of anything in particular to […]
Key West, Florida Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2007 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, shed light on the complex and diffuse […]
Summary of Findings What’s Your News IQ? Take the Latest Quiz Since the late 1980s, the emergence of 24-hour cable news as a dominant news source and the explosive growth of the internet have led to major changes in the American public’s news habits. But a new nationwide survey finds that the coaxial and digital […]
The continuing debate over the president’s strategy for Iraq kept that subject atop PEJ’s News Coverage Index for the week of January 14-19. But the tale of kidnapped Missouri boys, a nasty blast of winter, and the Barack Obama bandwagon also generated major coverage in a busy and varied news week.
Even in a week with North Korea, Iran, Anna Nicole, and Hillary on the front burner, it’s U.S. strategy in the Iraq war that commands the talk airwaves. And the dominance of that debate reveals something about the nature of the talk show culture.