Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Overview The debate over raising the federal debt limit proved to be the public’s – and the media’s – top news story last week as the federal government neared a possible default and high level deficit-reduction talks produced no agreement. About three-in-ten (31%) say they followed the discussions about how to address the federal deficit […]
The growing News of the World scandal drew increased media attention last week, but not enough to stanch interest in the debt deliberations in Washington, which have fueled the top story for five weeks running. A record-breaking heat wave, the end of an era at NASA and a relatively quiet presidential campaign also ranked among the top stories last week.
Though the economy topped the mainstream news agenda, Obama’s troop drawdown announcement gave Afghanistan its biggest week of coverage in a year. And while mainstay subjects—the campaign and the Mid-East—continued to make news, the surprise arrest of one of the FBI’s most wanted dominated the end of the week.
It was a diverse news week that started off with the arrest of the IMF chief, but ended with the media focused on strained U.S.-Israel relations and the problems with the GOP presidential field. Meanwhile, attention to the aftermath of the bin Laden raid continued to diminish dramatically.
Events and controversies related to Islam dominated U.S. press coverage of religion in 2010, bumping the Catholic Church from the top spot, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The fighting in the Mideast, and especially Libya, topped the news last week, narrowly ahead of the U.S. economy. But perhaps the most interesting development was the emergence of the presidential campaign as a major story—thanks in large part to one controversial candidate-in-waiting.
Summary of Findings The devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan late last week dominated the public’s news interest – and news media coverage – in the days following the March 11 disaster. Roughly half (52%) of the public say they very closely followed news about the massive earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan […]
First it was Egypt, then Bahrain and last week, Libya as the media focused on yet another country in the rolling and roiling season of Mideast revolution. Back at home, the faceoff between pro-union forces and Wisconsin’s Republican governor fueled coverage of the week’s second-biggest story.