The intensifying protests and political ferment inside Iran eclipsed some major domestic stories in the U.S. news agenda last week. And as the mainstream press confronted daunting restrictions on coverage, an outpouring of social media reports—but not all from Twitter—helped drive the Iran narrative.
As attention to the economy dropped, the nation’s anti-terrorism policies dominated the news agenda for the second time in the past month. Since the release of the interrogation memos, coverage of this topic has jumped dramatically.
For the fourth week in a row, a different component of the faltering economy drove coverage of a crisis now overshadowing every other news event. And the White House and a radio host locked horns in what may actually be a symbiotic relationship.
Even the Palin phenomenon took a back seat last week as a profound crisis in the financial markets dominated the headlines. In a campaign season of constantly changing storylines, will this become the dominant issue that determines the outcome?
There wasn’t much good news in the media campaign narrative for either John McCain or Barack Obama last week. The big McCain story was a staff shakeup that exposed internal problems in the campaign. Meanwhile Obama was trying to prove his patriotism, avoid charges of flip-flopping, and minimize the damage from a surrogate controversy.
John McCain and Hillary Clinton both walked away with crucial New Hampshire victories but the Arizona Republican trailed the New York Democrat badly in the battle for media attention. And why the media treated Mike Huckabee’s third-place finish much differently than John Edwards’.
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.
Thanks in part to the Democrats’ spirited debate in Philadelphia, last week was the biggest week of the year for the presidential campaign in the universe of radio and cable talk shows. The main course was the Democratic front runner who got carved up by hosts and pundits of various political stripes.
The increasingly heated exchanges between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney helped make the race for the White House the top story last week in PEJ’s Index of the news. On the Democratic side, a former President generated a good chunk of the coverage, and it wasn’t all good. That, plus a football murder case.
The presidential race was easily the biggest story in the media last week. But while much of the coverage focused on the attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Democrats’ Drexel University debate, the press also reassessed several other candidates.
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