What was the big religion story of the general election? A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in conjunction with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life examines how the media covered religious matters.
The campaign press declared Barack Obama’s Nov. 4 victory a culturally transforming event, but was far less certain it was a politically transforming moment. And within days, the search for lessons had yielded to speculation about the new administration.
The new wrinkle in last week’s campaign coverage was not the Democrats’ results in Oregon and Kentucky or the flap over Hillary Clinton’s Robert Kennedy comment. It was the story of GOP hopeful John McCain finally morphing from bystander on the sidelines to newsmaker in the headlines.
In a week in which the campaign overwhelmingly dominated the talk airwaves, the hottest issue was Obama’s speech aimed at dampening the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. In the talk show universe, the response was impassioned, but the verdict was far from unanimous.
The two biggest names in talk radio are telling their listeners how to separate the real conservatives from phonies. And some hosts seemed to “cover” the campaign by becoming part of the story.
The unlikely surge of former Arkansas Governor helped generate the biggest week of coverage for the presidential campaign so far in 2007. But as Huckabee is learning, some media attention is more welcome than others. Plus, the Mitchell report turns steroid abuse in baseball into a front-page story—some might say at long last.
With the exception of the war in Iraq, international affairs tend not to generate major media interest. But General Pervez Musharraf’s Nov. 3 declaration of emergency rule in Pakistan proved to be a dramatic exception to that rule—and there may be several disquieting reasons why.
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