Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The Shirley Sherrod saga started with a video posted online and ended with a flurry of finger pointing. In a special report, PEJ reconstructs a chronology of how the story reverberated around the media echo chamber before dramatically changing course. And this week’s News Coverage Index finds that the tale of the USDA employee prematurely forced out of her job was the No. 2 story in the news agenda.
With most of the coverage about African Americans fueled by individual newsmakers, what kind of coverage emerged about the population of African Americans in general? Which media tended to produce these kinds of reports, and what sorts of themes and images emerged? Overall these stories painted a downbeat picture of the state of African Americans […]
The blogosphere resembled one of those old CNN Crossfire shows last week as liberals and conservatives frequently faced off on such issues as federal assistance programs, charges of bigotry and opposition to President Obama.
In addition to looking at how the mainstream media covered African Americans, this study also examined how issues of race were treated in the African American press. To do so, we looked at coverage of the biggest race story of the year, the Henry Louis Gates arrest and its aftermath. For this separate analysis, […]
The debate over the Islamic Center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York was a hotly contested issue for bloggers for the third week in a row as the focus turned to the motives of those opposing the construction. On Twitter, a new phone app feature from Google created a mostly positive buzz.