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A Year in the News

Intro

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Two overriding, continuing stories took turns dominating headlines in 2007. As the year began, the increasingly bloody Iraq war and the fierce political debate over war strategy drove intensive coverage of the conflict. And the launch of Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacies at the outset of the year triggered aggressive coverage of the earliest-starting campaign in U.S. history.

Broadly speaking, the stories had reverse trajectories. By the end of the year, with the surge deemed largely to be working and President Bush in control of war policy, coverage of the Iraq conflict diminished considerably — with coverage of the political debate dropping more sharply than news of events on the ground. And with the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary drawing near, coverage of the campaign swelled.

Taken together, the two continuing story lines — war and a presidential election — consumed a large portion of the media’s energy and resources, and nearly a third of the overall newshole in PEJ’s analysis of the news media. Factor that in with the broader trends affecting the news industry — economic retrenchment, staffing cuts and recalibrated ambitions — and 2007 became a year notable for the narrowness of the news agenda, defined almost as much by what wasn’t covered as what was.

For 2007, PEJ offers a more in-depth, comprehensive analysis of news coverage than ever before. It examines coverage every weekday for the entire year in 48 media outlets and five media sectors, as well as Sunday newspapers. More than 70,000 stories were examined. The results offer what we believe to be an unprecedented view of what the mainstream media delivered in 2007 as well as insights into the priorities, tendencies and trends that helped define the news agenda. Among the key findings are:

• In the fragmenting media universe, the “old media” sectors — such as newspapers and network television — seem to have a broader and more diverse news agenda than the newer, more opinionated platforms, notably talk radio and cable television news. Not only did the older sectors offer a wider variety of subject matter, but they also were the least likely to be dominated by a few mega-stories, such as the Iraq war and politics. Talk radio and cable news tended to take the one or two hottest stories in the news and magnify them over the airwaves.
• In a strict sense, the American media did not in 2007 cover the world. Rather it would be more accurate to say it covered some U.S. interests abroad. Beyond Iraq, only two countries in 2007 received notable coverage, both closely related to the war — Iran and Pakistan. Among the arguably newsworthy places that received scant attention were Afghanistan, North Korea, Darfur, Russia, China and Lebanon.
• The media and the public often disagreed about which stories were important in 2007. For one thing, citizens suggested that the press failed to deliver sufficient coverage of some basic bread and butter issues, such as rising gas prices, toy recalls, and the legislative battle over children’s health insurance. They also showed less interest than the media in the crisis in Pakistan and certain aspects of the Iraq debate, such as General David Petraeus’ September appearance before Congress. To the extent the press covered distant parts of the world, people in some ways thought even that was too much.
• Rush Limbaugh’s reference to the mainstream press as the “drive-by” media may be an ideologically driven critique, but in the case of several major stories in 2007, including the Virginia Tech massacre, the media did reveal a tendency to flood the zone with instant coverage and then quickly drop the subject. The media in 2007 had a markedly short attention span. Despite the fascination in some quarters with Hollywood bad girls such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the reality is that much of the mainstream media wasn’t very interested in tabloid-style gossip and scandal. To the extent that there is interest in the mainstream press, the largest share comes from cable television news.

A Narrower News Agenda:

News consumers may have had more choices than ever for where to find news in 2007, but that does not mean they had more news to choose from. The news agenda for the year was, in fact, quite narrow, dominated by a few major general topic areas. Together, coverage of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. politics and elections accounted for almost one-third of the overall newshole for the year. It gets even narrower if we look at the specific news stories that drove coverage in each of those topic areas. Year-long coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign pre-empted most political attention. And coverage of U.S. foreign policy topic was dominated by the war in Iraq and the debate over war strategy.

The third-biggest topic area in 2007 (11%) involved foreign events not directly related to U.S. actions. But these, too, rather than broadening the news agenda, point to a narrow range of coverage. First, Iraq and the two other areas of anti-terrorism concern — Iran and Pakistan -- accounted for more than a quarter of that coverage. And another chunk of that foreign coverage involved one-time events, man-made and natural disasters such as plane crashes and hurricanes, lifestyle, science, celebrity, crime, and even lingering questions about the death of Princess Di. These stories ranged from the damage caused by Hurricane Dean in Mexico and parts of the Caribbean to the introduction of a group of baby pandas in China.

In short, an examination of the reporting finds that less than half of the foreign coverage that was not about the United States directly was concerned with what we might consider geopolitical foreign matters, diplomacy, internal affairs, etc.

Most Covered Topics Across All Media

2007

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Topics by Media Sector

2007

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

A Limited Domestic Agenda:

In 2007, we learned that many of children’s toys were unsafe as were a dismaying number of food products that needed to be removed from supermarket shelves. A landmark energy bill passed that set new fuel economy standards for the automotive industry for the first time in more than three decades. A heated battle erupted in Congress over a plan to expand health insurance for children.

Yet an examination of the mainstream news agenda in 2007 reveals that a broad range of domestic subjects was given limited attention by the media. And at least in theory, these stories were logistically much easier to report on than the Mideast or North Korea.

The half-dozen broad topic areas that generated the least coverage last year included development and urban sprawl, the legal and court system, religion, transportation, education, and race, gender and sexual identity issues. None of these attracted more than 1% of the coverage over all.

Least Covered Domestic Issues
Percent of Newshole

These lesser-covered subjects do have something in common. Matters of religion, gender and race relate to the social underpinnings of the culture and the way people feel about their daily lives. Similarly, development, transportation and education relate to institutional underpinnings of daily life. Broadly speaking, they are the bread and butter subjects that most people deal with on a constant basis. Why weren’t these subjects a more significant part of the news diet in 2007?

They are also subjects that normally bend rather than break. In other words, education, religion, infrastructure are vital factors in our lives, but they are slow-moving trends. They are news that bends. This kind of news requires more continuous attention to be able to understand and explain incremental changes along the way or to know when the small changes have added up to something more comprehensive — specialists, beats, sentinels assigned to watch. Many news organizations have cut back on staff devoted to specific beats like these.

Also, news that breaks, such as car crashes or explosions, generates more immediate news appeal, often involving strong visuals or attention-grabbing headlines.

Government Gets Short Shrift:

The extensive attention to the Washington-based debate over Iraq war policy and the battle for the White House also in some ways crowded out other news occurring inside the halls of the U.S. government in 2007.

In 2007, coverage of government filled 6% of the overall newshole in the five media sectors studied. That includes such areas as legislative debate over immigration, domestic anti-terrorism policy and the activities of the new Democratic-led Congress, which was the third-biggest story (at 6%) for the month of January 2007, when the new legislators took office with what many believed was a mandate to end the Iraq war.

How does that level of government coverage compare with past efforts? While this is the first year the Project has mounted such a comprehensive look at the media, the number, while not unprecedented, is lower than in recent years. In 2003, also a year before a presidential election, coverage of government accounted for 16% of the stories on the three commercial nightly television newscasts. In 2007, the comparable number was 5%. (The number was considerably higher a few decades ago, 37% in 1977 and 32% in 1987). On cable in 2003, government news made up 29% of the cable airtime. In 2007 government accounted for 7 % of the airtime on the cable programs studied. There are very likely a number of factors at play in the 2007 figures, not all driven by press choices. The excitement over the election and the intensity of the debate over Iraq policy were clearly bigger stories than they were four years earlier. Further, the lack of media coverage may in part reflect the lack of activity of a lame duck Bush administration, which, beyond thwarting the Democrats over the war and failing on its immigration plans, did not press much of an agenda in 2007.

Finally, as we see with coverage of domestic issues, the drop in government coverage may reflect newsroom resources — a diminished capacity of the press to cover multiple Washington-focused stories.

Consider for instance that on CBS News, White House correspondent Jim Axelrod has also been assigned to cover the Hillary Clinton campaign for president. Or that when the Washington bureau of the Copley News Service was recently cut back, those departing included Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer, staffers who had won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the bribery case that led to the resignation of Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the California Republican who is now in prison for accepting bribes.

One of the other biggest government stories of the year was the firing of U.S. attorneys, which led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and filled 1% of the newshole for the year. But early on in 2007, it was actually the work of a blogger, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, that connected the crucial dots on the case while much of the mainstream press either failed to grasp its importance or was preoccupied elsewhere. (Marshall was later honored with the George Polk Award for Legal Reporting for essentially scooping the mainstream press on this story.)

A Limited Diet of Global News:

The year 2007 was the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since that war began in 2001. The U.S. reached a historic agreement on nuclear weapons with North Korea, a one-time member of what President Bush called “the Axis of Evil.” In November, about 50 countries gathered in Annapolis, Md., to start the most intensive Mideast peacemaking effort in years.

Yet, when one examines coverage of the world in 2007, it was dominated by only three geopolitical hot spots. Foremost was the war in Iraq, which accounted for nearly one-sixth of the overall coverage examined when you factor in all three story threads — the Washington-based political debate, the situation inside Iraq and the impact of the war on the U.S. homefront.

The second overseas crisis to generate notable attention was Iran, which finished as the fifth-biggest individual story of the year. But the most extensive spurts of coverage did not directly involve simmering U.S.-Iran tensions. Major spikes stemmed from the March 2007 hostage drama in which Iran temporarily detained 15 British sailors. Another big week of coverage occurred during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York, a trip that included a highly contentious appearance at Columbia University.

The other hotspot was Pakistan, a crucial but unstable ally in U.S. anti-terrorist efforts, which was rocked by internal turmoil. The return from exile and the subsequent assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December generated more focused coverage that made Pakistan the ninth-biggest single story line of the year.

Yet, other than these three related stories — Iraq, Iran and Pakistan — coverage of the numerous international crises and events around the globe, some that clearly involved crucial U.S. interests, was modest in 2007. The war in Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the arms negotiations with North Korea, the civilian deaths in Darfur, and growing tensions between Washington and Moscow were among the major global events of the year that generated neither sustained coverage nor even intense short-term interest in the U.S. media.

Taken separately, each of the following foreign stories accounted for one-half of one percent or less of all coverage: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (0.5%), nuclear negotiations with North Korea (0.4%), the violence in Darfur (0.2%) and deteriorating U.S. relations with Russia (0.2%).

Afghanistan, where American troops are fighting, made up less than 1% of coverage (0.9%)

Arguably, no country in 2007 might have commanded as much regular media attention as China, whose growing economy makes it the emerging global power. Yet in 2007, the China-related story that got the most media attention was the recall of products and toys. And even that fell well shy of filling 1% of the newshole.

The lack of broad and deep international coverage is probably a function of several interrelated factors. The war in Iraq has soaked up much of the journalistic energy and resources in the past five years. And the general trend in the news business toward cost-cutting and staff-reduction has meant an overall retreat from coverage around the world.A February 2007 article in the Washington Post on the “demise of the foreign correspondent” reported that the number of foreign-based newspaper reporters dropped about 25% between 2002 and 2006.

Yet another factor may be the public’s lack of interest in overseas stories, which has been measured in the 2007 News Interest Index surveys. (See section on the coverage divide.)

Differences By Media:

There were some notable differences in news judgment among the media sectors, both in terms of subject matter covered and the diversity or breadth of the news. (Each of the sectors is analyzed at a deeper level in their own subchapters that follow. Here we discuss their broad differences in news agenda.)

One key finding in 2007 is that the platforms that offered the widest variety of coverage were two traditional media sectors, newspapers and network television.

One way to measure this diversity is to see whether coverage was widely dispersed or concentrated in several key areas. How much space, for instance, did each media sector devote to their three biggest topics? Network television and newspaper front pages devoted the least (38% and 39%, respectively). The number was substantially higher in radio (43%), cable (48%) and among the top stories online (55%). Conversely, newspapers and network television had the highest number of topic areas (13 and 12, respectively) that filled about 3% of the newshole or more.

There were also significant differences in the smaller topic areas. Only newspapers included business coverage and health and medical stories among their top priorities. Broadcast network news offered the most coverage of disasters and accidents, such as the Minnesota bridge collapse and Southern tornadoes. Cable television news, with its demand for live-event coverage, devoted the most time by far to crime coverage. Radio proved to be the most self-absorbed sector, making coverage of the media itself one of its top coverage areas. (Much of that reflected talk radio’s fascination with the April 2007 firing of longtime radio host Don Imus over racially crude remarks.)

Each sector had its own characteristics that shaped content choices. Newspapers and network television, the two platforms that offered the broadest news agenda, have historically attracted the largest audiences and have been most willing to invest in reporting resources. Cable television and radio, the two sectors that offer the highest doses of political coverage, are home to the ideologically driven talk shows that tend to hammer away at the biggest and most divisive issues in the country on a daily basis.

The most distinct sector in 2007 was online. The Web sites studied by PEJ consistently displayed the most interest in the rest of the world and the least interest in covering U.S. domestic politics. Not only did coverage of foreign policy and geopolitics make up almost half of the online newshole in 2007, but the leading broad topic category also featured international events that did not primarily involve the U.S. Why would the online sector offer by far the largest selection of international news? One conceivable explanation is that the Internet has the largest reach and is the medium that most easily crosses borders and continents.

It is also true that as a platform that often specializes in news aggregation and collection, many Web sites can cover the world without incurring the substantial expenses of overseas reporting.

The One-Week Wonders: Big Stories That Quickly Vanish

 When the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour on August 1, 2007, killing 13 people, the tragedy quickly commandeered major cable coverage and dominated the news for several days. All told, it accounted for one-quarter of that week’s news coverage, making it the eighth-biggest single-week story of 2007.

After the rescue and recovery operations ended, the bridge collapse provided the press with a chance to focus attention and examine the state of road, bridge and tunnel infrastructure in American society, something that we have heard for years may have suffered because of changes in government priorities.

Did the bridge disaster lead to that kind of coverage?

For about a week after the disaster, coverage focused almost solely on the casualties and cleanup. And aside from the occasional story making a connection between funding priorities and bridge safety, the infrastructure angle went largely unexplored. Instead, coverage of the tragedy quickly petered out, dropping to 6% the week after the accident and then down to 1% the following week.

The bridge catastrophe was just one of a number of stories in 2007 that were big events that flashed across the media landscape and then vanished almost instantly, with less follow-up than one might have expected. They were one-week wonders.

Top 15 Single-Week Stories

2007

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The event that generated the most coverage in any single week in 2007 was the April 16 massacre in which 33 were killed at Virginia Tech. That week, the tragedy accounted for more than half of all news coverage examined, the biggest story of the year in any given week. The media descended on the traumatized Blacksburg, Va., campus and after a few days, a student (or students) had constructed a sign that read “VT Stay Strong. Media Stay Away.”

In fact, the media coverage soon diminished notably. The week following the shooting, Virginia Tech accounted for only 7% of the newshole. By the end of April, it had virtually vanished from the media agenda. There was little follow-up on a number of story lines that seemed to emerge from the rampage, including the debate over gun control and the issue of identifying and treating troubled adolescents who display serious psychological problems, or the security and communications plans on college campuses and other schools when emergencies occur.

Other breaking events that were among the biggest weekly stories of 2007 followed a similar pattern. There was an intense outburst of spot coverage of the destructive Southern California wildfires in October that forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes. It was the second-biggest story in any single week, accounting for 38% of the coverage. But the following week, as the fires came under control, coverage plummeted by about 90% and it virtually disappeared the week after that. The underlying issue raised by the fires, the spread of housing development to areas that are prone to such catastrophes did not generate significant follow-up.

The firing of Don Imus filled more than a quarter of the newshole in the week of April 8. But coverage plummeted to 1% the next week.

Not all of these stories might have called for the same level of examination and follow-up. (As it was, the Imus story was arguably carried further than it otherwise would have been by talk hosts who were obsessed by something that happened to one of their own.) But the fact that the Virginia Tech disaster and the bridge collapse failed to have real journalistic “legs” and to generate further substantive coverage seems more telling.

What explains this phenomenon, what some critics call hit-and-run journalism? Certainly, one factor seems to be the role of cable television news, particularly daytime cable news, with its relentless hunger for live breaking events is a crucial factor. Almost invariably, it is cable news that lavishes wall-to-wall attention on these big stories, giving them the sense of ubiquity and catastrophe.

On cable, for example, the Virginia Tech story filled three-quarters of the newshole that week, the most coverage by any media sector. Cable devoted half its time to the California wildfires the week that story broke and nearly half its time to the Imus firing and the Minneapolis bridge story. It is cable’s propensity to drop virtually the rest of the news agenda to focus almost exclusively on one event that helps create such mega-stories. Yet, cable’s short attention span and constant search for the next major headline can turn this week’s bombshell into next week’s afterthought.

Cable producers may imagine they have covered all angles of a breaking story while it is occurring. Yet that “do it all at once” approach may also lead to more repetition than depth. And it lacks the perspective that comes with time, even a week or two, to sort out the meaning and implications of events as the initial trauma and shock fade.

Other factors may be built into the nature of the news more generally. News is immediate, not so retrospective. And again one must also wonder about the connection to reporting resources. The one media sector that displayed a tendency to do more aggressive follow-up on these big stories was the newspaper industry, which, despite a recent history of cutbacks, still tends to produce more boots-on-the-ground reporting than other platforms and remains, by our estimates, at 90% of its peak staffing (See Newspaper News Investment).

Coverage That Divided the News Media From News Consumers:

For the first time, in 2007, the Project was able to examine whether the public agreed or disagreed with the media over what constituted important news. Each week, the News Interest Index survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press asked news consumers to describe their level of interest in the top stories as identified in the News Coverage Index. Several clear areas of disconnect emerged.

In the week of May 20-25, with the average price of gasoline spiking to $3.22 a gallon, 52% of those surveyed in the News Interest Index said they were following that issue very closely, the highest level of public interest for any story in 2007. Yet, at 4% of the newshole, the rising costs at the pump were only the sixth-biggest story of that week in the News Coverage Index. That represented the biggest disparity of the year in these two metrics between editors and the public, and it was a basic pocketbook issue, the cost of filling a gas tank.

Looking at stories that the public said they were most closely following, significant interest gaps emerged for several other news events — revelations that the dangerous staph “superbug” called MRSA was more common than previously thought, recalls of pet food, the troubled U.S. economy in the week that investor guru Warren Buffett said taxes on the rich were too low, and President Bush’s veto of the legislation intended to expand health insurance for children.

Public Interest vs. Media Coverage

2007

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

As was the case with many of the topic areas that got little coverage in the press, the common characteristic that defines these particular stories, including the spike at the gas pump, is that they speak to the nuts and bolts of daily existence, such as health and money. (See this section for more)

Conversely, there were some subjects that the media seemed far more interested in covering than the public said they were interested in following. These might be the stories that the media “over-delivered” in the year. A number of those stories involved events overseas. President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to declare a state of emergency in Pakistan, the Mideast peace summit meeting, the agreement by North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program and the Lebanese Army’s battle with Islamic militants were all stories that generated more media attention than public interest.

Those results apparently reflect the public’s lack of interest in stories that, in fact, are getting only minimal coverage. So even as journalists seem to have little inclination to cover global events other than Iraq, news consumers still think they’re being oversaturated. There may be a chicken-and-egg effect here. If Americans really aren’t interested in global conflicts, the press has even less incentive to spend time and money on those stories.

One major overcovered story of the year, according to the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press surveys, was General David Petraeus’ Iraq progress report to Congress in September. Eagerly anticipated for months as a potential turning point in the battle for public opinion about the war, the report proved to be anti-climactic. Petraeus’ message was to stay the course, and by then President Bush had successfully beaten back congressional attempts to change American strategy in Iraq. The media hung on Petraeus’ every word and delivered the single biggest week of Iraq policy coverage. The public, only 14% of whom said that was the story they most closely followed that week, may have displayed the better grasp of the actual news value of the event.

The Mainstream Media Shun Tabloid Tales:

In 2007, not a single day seemed to pass without news of the public, or even private, indiscretions, of the troubled “girls gone wild” trio of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Celebrity DUIs and quick jaunts to rehab clinics felt like a staple of the news diet. No one could be blamed for thinking the press had been taken over by the paparazzi. In fact, the new TMZ syndicated television program is a celebrity show that often provides a paparazzi eye-view.

When assessing this torrent of info-tainment, one important question remains: Who is actually responsible for the coverage? Yes, the tabloid celebrity culture — fueled by US magazine, TMZ.com, Entertainment Tonight, cable news cameras, and an expanding array of “pap” media — grew bigger in 2007. But a closer look reveals that much of the mainstream media, as examined by PEJ, actually tended to give these stories a good leaving alone.

The broad topic of celebrity and entertainment was far down — at No. 16 — on the list of mainstream media priorities last year, filling only 2% of the overall newshole (behind, for example, coverage of the news media itself). Week after week, the red hot gossip specials — Spears’ bizarre head-shaving spree, Lohan’s drunk driving rap, the Rosie O’Donnell-Donald Trump feud, and Alec Baldwin’s venomous voicemail to his daughter — failed to gain any traction in the mainstream media, usually accounting for 1% or less of the week’s coverage.

Does this represent some diminishing interest in celebrity news in the mainstream media culture, particularly given the plethora of new specialized celebrity media? That is harder to answer at this point, but is something we can examine going forward.¹

There were certainly scandals that attracted the media’s attention in 2007, but they were not strictly celebrity. Two of the biggest involved government officials. The U.S. attorney firings that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stayed in the news for much of the year and ended up as the 10th-biggest story of 2007. The arrest of Senator Larry Craig on charges that he solicited sex from an undercover police officer was the biggest story the week it broke. O. J. Simpson, now perhaps less of a celebrity than a serial criminal defendant, also generated major coverage with his Las Vegas arrest on armed robbery and kidnapping charges.

But only two classic celebrity scandals — those involving the charter members of the showbiz, nightlife and gossip column crowd — cracked the weekly list of top-10 stories in 2007.

For one week in early June, party girl/socialite Paris Hilton made major news, and it was largely for the strange set of circumstances in which she was released from jail early, quickly escorted from her home to court in a police vehicle and then sent sobbing back to jail by an angry judge. But other than that one spike in coverage, Hilton received minimal attention.

The other big celebrity tale made a considerably larger splash. The circumstances surrounding the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the former Playboy centerfold model, actress and heiress — and the ensuing court battles for custody of her body and infant daughter — became a much longer-running saga that ended up as the eighth-biggest story in the first quarter of 2007. In the interval from Smith’s death on February 8 to her burial on March 2, only two other stories — the debate over Iraq and the 2008 presidential race — generated more attention in than Smith’s demise.

But a deeper examination indicates that even what happened in the Smith case was a selective media feeding frenzy driven by the relentless coverage in only two media sectors. In the three weeks between her death and burial, the story consumed 22% of the cable news airtime studied and 15% of the coverage on the three broadcast network morning television shows. Much of the rest of the media treated it as an afterthought. For those who turned to radio, the Internet or newspaper front pages, the Smith story was a much smaller deal, not even reaching 5% of the newshole in any of those sectors. And a good deal of that coverage came on Feb. 8 or 9, when the news first surfaced of Smith’s mysterious death.

The travails of the rich and famous are a treasure trove for the tabloids, the TMZs and the television shows that focus on Hollywood. But when it comes to the bulk of the mainstream media, those stories tend to be treated as trivia in 2007.

Footnotes

1. A look back at a previous PEJ study of a comparable time sample of morning network news suggests that the level of celebrity coverage in 2007 was similar to that in 2004. A comparison with cable news from that year suggests the number may have dropped. The 2004 cable sample included just three programs over 20 days, but examined both the first and second half-hours of those programs. The current PEJ sample includes many more programs but examines just the first half-hour.

Newspaper

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds of The Poynter Institute

In 2007, despite numerous hits to the industry and a rush of resources away from print and toward the Web, newspapers stood out in 2007 for unique coverage. Their particular strength, at least in print, may be less covering breaking news than tracking stories that percolated, ebbed and flowed over the course of the year. The nation’s newspapers gave front-page coverage to issues and events often not found in other news genres. The state of the U.S. economy, the continuing debate over health care policies and foreign news beyond the war in Iraq, among others, stood out on newspaper front-pages.

Here, we take a look at three distinct areas of coverage where the role of newspapers stands out.

The Economy

In January of 2008, economic concerns rose significantly among Americans to rival the war in Iraq as the top problem facing the country.¹ At the same time, it began driving the presidential primary debates and became a top issue influencing primary votes.²

In the press, newspapers had already been covering the issue for months, dedicating staff, space and early attention the story when most other genres had yet to treat it as top news.

Looking across 2007, newspaper front pages covered the downturn in the U.S. economy more than any of the other six genres studied. Over all, it was No. 4 among the biggest stories of the year in newspapers, accounting for 3% of the front-page newshole. The only other genres to include the economy on their top 10 list were online news sites, where it ranked No. 6 over all (2%) and network morning and evening television news, where it placed No. 5 for each (2%).

Top 10 Newspaper Stories

2007

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The emphasis in print is even greater than it first may seem, considering it includes only the front-page articles. The business section fronts may well have had more. This compares to the entirety of network evening news shows, the hard news section of the morning programs (where all the economic news would likely be) and several hours of cable programming each day. (The online news studied is more similar to newspapers — the top five stories of the page.)

This difference also was not a case of the big national papers tuned in to debates in Washington and on Wall Street while smaller papers across the country focused on more local matters. If anything, the local papers tuned in to the issue of the flagging economy first. The issue actually accounted for more of the front-page newshole in medium-sized metropolitan papers (3.6%) and small papers (3.4%) than the national papers (2.9%)³.

Part of this attention at the local level was due to the nature of the story. It did not evolve as a Washington policy event initially but in neighborhoods across the country as people found their houses were not selling or the sale of their neighbors’ houses suggested their home values may have dropped. The sense of security that people had in their homes began to waver, and local newspapers began reporting the shifts, having attachments to the local communities and still with newsrooms structured to cover more than the news of the moment (something local television finds hard to break free of).

Breakdown of U.S. Economy Stories

Across Newspapers

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

As early as March of 2007, for example, the Ohio Star Beacon in Ashtabula reported that late mortgage payments had jumped to a three-and-a-half-year high, with foreclosures at an all-time high. The Bakersfield Californian front page noted that, after a steep decline, the local housing market was now one of the nation’s worst.

Another sign of the local nature of this story is that these smaller newspapers devoted their own staffs to covering this issue. For major national news stories, local and metropolitan papers tend to rely on the wires, especially the front-page stories. This was not the case when it came to coverage of the economy in 2007. At the mid-level metro papers, nearly 80% of coverage about the economy was from staff reporters versus about half the coverage of about the war in Iraq and only 37% of coverage about Iran. At the most local papers more than half (53%) of front-page economic coverage were written by staffers compared to just 29% of Iraq coverage.

How Newspapers Covered the U.S. Economy

Coverage by Format

Design Your own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The national paper that stood out most in early coverage was the Wall Street Journal. In March 2007, the paper carried front-page articles on failing mortgage lenders, fears about sub-prime loans and foreclosures, regulators facing added scrutiny and even a profile on one investor trying to take advantage of the low housing market.

Setting the Agenda

The failing economy had become a major story in American newspapers as early as March of 2007 when it was the eighth-most covered news event (accounting for 2% of the front-page newshole). The burst of coverage was driven largely by the downturn in the housing market. Fully 89% of the economic coverage that month (63% of the coverage for the year) pertained to the housing market. Again, roughly half of that was state or local reportage.

Elsewhere, the media had not yet noticed. The state of the economy did not show up in other sectors as a top story until August. That month, when the Federal Reserve began taking action, possible bankruptcy emerged at the largest mortgage lender and credit worries hit overseas markets, news Web sites, network news programming and radio news suddenly jumped into the story. For cable news, it took even longer and the economy did not make it into the top 10 list until December.

Newspaper Coverage of the U.S. Economy

2007

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

In newspapers, the troubled economy spiked to the top spot in August, accounting for 8% of the front-page newshole. And after that, the only months when the economy was not a top 10 story were May, June and July, when the scandals at the World Bank, the death of Jerry Falwell and Palestinian uprising drove it lower.

Health Care Policy

Newspapers also stood out as the one genre to devote significant amount of front-page space to the debate over health care policy. In 2007, it was not one big event or debate in Congress driving the coverage, but a story that ebbed and flowed throughout the course of the year as Congress debated new programs, states adopted new practices or public opinion shifted.

Over all, the health care debate was the 10th-biggest story on newspaper front-pages and accounted for 2% of the total front-page newshole.

Top Stories in Media in 2007
Percent of newshole

Health Care Coverage Across Media

2007, by Month

Design Your own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

No other genre covered the story to a degree that placed it among their top 10 stories of the year. Even the network evening news, whose agenda is usually the closest match the newspaper front pages (See Network Content) gave the story significant coverage only in one month of the year. That was October, when the debate about the State Children’s Health Insurance Program pushed health care to No. 9 among network news stories (for 2% of the newshole on network news programs). That month it is also ranked No. 5 in the radio programs studied (4%).

In newspapers, the health care issue ebbed and flowed but was around much of the year. The coverage ranged included rising Medicare costs, state initiatives such as the requirement in Massachusetts that residents carry health insurance, and, later in the fall, congressional debate over the proposed broadening of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. In total, it made the top 10 list in six months.

It appeared first in March with news of several different changes in policy: new strict federal standards on transplants, states turning to pharmaceutical companies to help contain Medicaid spending and doctors delinquent on Medicare tax payments. It then reappeared in June — more coverage of delinquent doctors, high costs for retirees in California, other state-level developments — and remained within the top 10 through October. In September when several local papers reported on new state findings or programs, it was the No. 5 among stories used.

As with the economy, this was not a case of the big papers covering the Washington debate. The issue actually accounted for more coverage in mid-sized papers (2%), followed by the smallest (1.8%) and then the national papers (1.4%).⁴

In this case, more than half of the reporting was about initiatives or problems in health care policies at the state or local level. Coverage included businesses in Albuquerque starting to charge high-risk employees, San Francisco — the first city ever — offering health to uninsured individuals, and new figures on college graduates opting out of health insurance.

Geographic Range

Beyond the issues in our own country, newspapers also were second only to news Web sites in their coverage of foreign affairs that did not involve the U.S. directly. The newspapers examined here devoted 13% of their front-page coverage to non-U.S. news, three times that of cable news (4%), more than double that of radio (7%) and also more than network television news (9%). Only online coverage devoted more — nearly 25% of lead-story coverage. Aside from events in Iraq the biggest foreign stories were about the situation in Pakistan (9%), the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories (3% on conflict between Israel and Palestine and 2% on the factions among the Palestinians ) and Iran (2%).

Geographic Focus by Medium

2007

Design Your own Chart

Note: In every medium less than 0.1% of the newshole had no specific geographic focus Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

One of the big issues in print is whether local and big metro papers should now become more local, or even “hyper local,” in the language of some Wall Street investment advisers. In past studies, PEJ has found a fair degree of foreign coverage in local papers, often on the front page, and more than in other media.

The geographic differences bear watching in 2008 as many metro papers found hyper local coverage to be, in many ways, more work. Covering 12 neighborhoods required more reporting, more resources — and in many cases faced greater competition -- than did covering national issues.

Conclusion

As newspapers struggle with the future unknowns — audience base, delivery mechanism, revenue base and even reporting agenda -- one thing is clear: In 2007, the print pages, and the print front-pages in particular, still provided information that was harder to find elsewhere. How, and if, that service translates to the Web or to the distribution of newsroom resources remains to be seen.

Footnotes

1. Pew Research Center for the People & Press, January Political Survey, Final Topline, January 9-13, 2008, www.people-press.org.

2. For detailed , WashingtonPost.com reports entrance and exit poll results from every state that has voted:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/primaries/exit-polls/topics/One-of-four-most-important-issue/r/ (Republican).

http://projects.washingtonpost.c om/2008-preside ntial-candidates/primaries/exit-polls/topics/most-important-issue/d/ (Democrats)

3. In order to get a representative sample of what the 1,450 daily newspapers cover across the United States, PEJ divides them into three tiers based on circulation. Five newspapers from the first tier and four each from the second and third tiers are in the sample. The list is as follows:

For each of the newspapers included in our sample, we code all articles where the beginning of the text of the story appears on the front page of that day’s hard copy edition. If an article has only a picture, caption or teaser to text inside the paper, we do not include that story in our sample.

We code all stories that appear on the front page with a national or international focus. Local articles that have no connection to a major news event or ongoing issue are not included in the sample. In this case, among other issues, the economy and health care were considered national domestic issues and included in the analysis.

4. The weekly news coverage index studies national news and thus for local newspapers includes all local coverage that pertains to a national news story. It does not include purely local news such as the closing of a local school or a highway accident. In this case, all health care stories were considered a part of the national news and were included in our analysis.

How does the lead news agenda online differ from that in other media? Is it a replay of what we find elsewhere? Is there any shifting of priorities? And among the most popular sites for news, commanding the largest share of the online news audience, how much original content is there to be found?

Throughout 2007, the Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a study of the lead news coverage every weekday on five of the most popular news sites on the Web -- AOL News, CNN.com, Google News, MSNBC.com, and Yahoo News.¹ These sites range from generating their own content to solely aggregating content from other sources to having a mix of original reporting and reliance on other news sources. While much exists on these sites beyond the lead stories, the goal of this study was to investigate what stories and topics the Web sites were choosing to emphasize above all others.

The most striking finding over all was a heavy emphasis on foreign news, particularly topics not involving the U.S. directly. One consequence of that, in turn, is that we found a smaller focus on major domestic news.

We also found that the sites varied tremendously -- not only aggregators versus originators of news but also among the aggregators themselves. Yahoo was the most focused on the events in Iraq, while Google gave more attention to the 2008 election and AOL covered smaller, one-time news events. The two cable news Web sites mirrored the characteristics of their cable counterparts but with an added emphasis on international news.

International Takes the Lead

Over all, the lead news agenda online was the most international of any media we studied. At least in their top five stories, which is roughly analogous to the number of stories found on a front page of a newspaper and generally describes the number of stories featured at the top of a Web page, the leading Web sites studied put a premium on international news that far outweighed any other medium. Fully 25% of the top coverage dealt with non-U.S. international stories. This was nearly six times that of cable (4%), three times that of commercial network evening news and the network morning news (8%), nearly twice that of newspapers (13%), and about 60% more than radio news programming (15%).

International Focus, By Media

2007

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

In addition, 26% of the space was devoted to U.S.-international events, again more than any other genre, though not to the large extent as foreign news.

Looking at the specific news stories covered enhances the finding. Of the top 10 news events in our online sample, six were foreign events, some of which involved U.S. policy and some of which did not. Events inside Iraq constituted the biggest story over all, accounting for more than one-tenth (11%) of the newshole of the lead stories online.

Other events in the top 10 list were Iran’s weapons build-up (No. 4 at 3%), Pakistan (No. 5 at 3%), the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan (No. 7 at 2%) and, at No. 10, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (2%)

By contrast, Afghanistan and Israel were not among the top 10 stories in the media over all and the other foreign stories all got a smaller share of the news agenda.

Top Stories for Online Sites in 2007
Percent of Newshole

Top Stories for All Media in 2007
Percent of Newshole

This emphasis on foreign coverage online was a trend that occurred throughout the entire year of 2007. In every month except one (December), these sites devoted the most attention in their lead news to an international story. From January through October it was the war in Iraq — either events on the ground there or the debate over U.S. policies about the war. In November, the top story did not even involve the U.S. The chaotic events occurring in Pakistan led, accounting for a full 14% of the online newshole for the month. December was the only month where an entirely domestic story, the presidential campaign. was the biggest online story (16% of the newshole).

Non-U.S. International Coverage, Online vs. Overall

2007, by month

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

No other overall media sector studied came close to giving international news such consistent top play. It is only at the more specific programming level that resemblance appears. On the commercial evening newscasts, international news events got the most coverage seven months of the year and the PBS evening news gave it top billing in nine. Morning network television, on the other hand, only had three months where an international news story got the most coverage (all three months being the debate about U.S. policy in Iraq). Even in newspapers, the sector with the second-most focus on non-U.S. foreign news, a domestic news event got the most coverage for eight months. Cable television had a domestic story in the lead 10 months in 2007.

Domestic News in the Background

One result of the emphasis on international news is that certain domestic topic areas and specific news stories got less prominence. Elections and other U.S. politics, for instance, received the lowest percentage of coverage in the online sector —just 8% of the online newshole studied, 17% in cable television, 11% on newspaper front pages and 10% in network television.

Online Topics for 2007
Percent of Newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
Note: * Other Domestic Affairs includes such things as development, transportation, education, religion, abortion, gun control, welfare, poverty, social security, labor, aging, court/legal system, race and gender issues, etc.

One area of domestic news that the Web sites gave more attention to in their lead stories was crime. Only cable television spent more of its news coverage (13%) on crime than the Web sites did (7%). In fact, for all of the domestic topics covered online, only stories about politics took up more space than coverage of crime. The greatest percent of this coverage were one-time events rather than continuing stories, followed then by coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings and the trial of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby Jr., the White House official whose prison sentence was commuted by President Bush.

Crime Coverage by Media, 2007

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

A number of domestic stories commanded less attention online than in other genres. Immigration, for example, was the No.12story of the year online (1% of the online newshole). While it received considerable more attention on cable television (5%) and radio (4%) and was the No. 4 story in the media over all. The tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings was the No.13 story online (1%) while it was the No. 7 story on cable (2%) and No. 9 on network television (2%).

Certainly users can find news stories about a large variety of topics lower down on these sites, in the margins of the news sections or through user-generated searches. But, to the extent that editors or algorithms are making a news agenda, there is higher priority placed on international news. And the PEJ has found in past research [LINK HERE TO TYPOLOGY] that it is often only these lead stories that take advantage of the online capabilities, offering users multimedia components such as slide shows, video clips or links to background information.

A User’s News Agenda?

If the Web is all about democratization of the news and the flow of information, there is an interesting chasm in the priority of news public interest. Through the year, the one area that the public consistently said the press gave too much attention to was foreign news. President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to declare a state of emergency in Pakistan, the Mideast peace summit meeting at Annapolis, Maryland, the agreement by North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program and the Lebanese Army’s battle with Islamic militants were all stories that the public felt generated too much media attention. (See Overview) Does this suggest that the Web sites, at least in their lead news coverage, are less reflective than other media of users’ interests? One important difference is that the audience for many of these Web sites, according to online news professionals, is more international in origin. The audience for network evening newscast, for instance, lives by and large in the United States. The audience for Yahoo News lives around the world.

Site Differences – The Aggregators

The mix of online outlets studied is more diverse in structure and news process than any other genre studied. Three of the sites aggregate news, one with a completely computer-based algorithm (Google News) and two tied to cable news channels (CNN.com and MSNBC.com). We’ll first consider the aggregators.

Google News uses a computer-based algorithm to determine the most popular stories being read throughout the net. It does not include any originally reported material, but takes its headlines and links from a wide variety of sources that originate from all over the globe.

Yahoo News is another frequently updated aggregator site, but it uses human editors to select stories throughout the day. The editors rely heavily for their top stories on wire services such as the Associated Press (98%) and, as we have found in past research, update it continuously. At least in these top stories, Yahoo News tends to emphasize breaking news as it happens rather than offering different angles on a given story, analysis pieces, or multimedia treatment of top stories.

AOL News also relies heavily on wire news services for its content, but the home page looks less like a listing of the top stories and more like an interactive newspaper in that each of the highlighted top stories on the center of the page is given a teaser, a photograph, and perhaps an interactive feature. In addition to the feature stories, AOL News is incorporating more and more user input by having sections on the home page devoted to “blog chatter” and “user-submitted news.” These sections are different from the prominent stories highlighted by the editorial process from AOL.

How did the various structures sites play out in the featured news coverage? How did Google’s algorithm-based selections compare with the stories on a aggregator such as Yahoo, a site that is still mostly written by outside news organizations but involves an editorial selection?

Geographic Focus for the Top 5 News Web Sites
Percent of Newshole

Google and Yahoo stood out for a similar devotion to international events, more than other outlets. Fully two-thirds of the lead coverage on each site was about foreign news (65%) for Yahoo and 64% for Google). Google devoted a little more space to non-U.S. international events (37% versus 32% on Yahoo).

But within this geographic breadth, their specific story lineups were quite different. Google’s top story of the year was domestic — the 2008 presidential campaign, accounting for 10% of the lead coverage. This was close to five times the attention it received on Yahoo, where it barely made it into the top 10 list (coming in at No. 9 with 2%).

Top Stories for Google News in 2007
Percent of Newshole

Second on Google’s list was the U.S. debate over policies in Iraq (7%) which was also the second story on Yahoo’s list (5%). Beyond these, though, the only other U.S.-based story to make it in Google’s top 10 was the scandal over the fired U.S. attorneys (No. 6 at 2%). This and the percentage of foreign coverage over all suggests that beyond these stories, much of the day-to-day coverage was spent on international news.

Google has even structurally imposed priority for foreign news. Beneath the top two or three stories featured on the center of the page are topic-related sections, the first of these is “World” news, followed by “ U.S.” news.

Yahoo News stood out in its lead news stories for a devotion to events inside Iraq. Those events alone accounted for a full 16% of lead coverage, making it the top story over all for 2007. Those events ranked first on the other three Web sites as well, but not at that degree of coverage. (MSNBC.com devoted the second most attention to it at 12%.) Coverage of these events got three times the attention on Yahoo as the second- place story, the debate over U.S. policies there (5%).

In fact, events in Iraq got the top most billing—the No. 1 lead story in more one out of every four weekday mornings (27%) in 2007.

Top Stories for Yahoo News in 2007
Percent of Newshole

The other story that stood out on Yahoo’s news page was the U.S. economy. Throughout the year, its lead stories tended to give more attention to the U.S. economy, 4%, than the 2008 presidential campaign, 2 %.)

Top Stories for AOL News in 2007
Percent of Newshole

If Yahoo was the most caught up in one news story, AOL News was the reverse. Readers of its news page got the greatest mix of lead stories day-to-day. AOL spent less time on the Iraq War (13% total) than any of the other Web sites, and no single news story took up more than 7% of the coverage. Over all, the top 10 stories accounted for just 28% of the newshole, at least 20% less than any other Website studied (MSNBC.com 42%, CNN.com 35%, Yahoo news 49%, Google news 41%). And the last two stories on the list — global warming and the investigation over the leaking of Valerie Plame’s association with the CIA, each accounting for 1% – did not show up in the top lists of any of the other four Web sites.

Another way to consider AOL’s tendency toward smaller, one-time news events is by looking at the top story for each download. What landed in the No. 1 spot? Here again, the big news events of the year were less common. On 13% of the days tracked, the lead story was not among the list of major stories that PEJ was tracking as part of its weekly index. Among the other sites, an average of only 9% were not big news events.

For example, on the morning of July 9, AOL led with a story about the NAACP planning to hold a symbolic funeral for the “N-word,” a story that did not attract much attention in many other media outlets. On that same day, MSNBC.com led with a story about a tougher immigration policy in Oklahoma, Yahoo News led with a story about President Bush invoking executive privilege to prevent some of his staff from having to testify in the investigation over the fired U.S. attorneys, Google News led with a story about Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf trying to deal with a conflict with militants at a mosque in his country, and CNN.com led with a story about the shutdown of the Pennsylvania state government over a budget dispute. All these stories on the sites other than AOL were stories that received much more coverage in the media over all than the story that AOL chose to lead with.

The differences in subject matter between AOL News and Yahoo News cannot be accounted for by the sources that the sites use for their lead stories. Both AOL and Yahoo use wire services for more than 90% of the lead news coverage on their sites, most of it coming from the Associated Press. So while each site often relies on similar sources, they make very different editorial decisions about which stories to lead with.

Source by Web Sites
Percent of Newshole

Google News, on the other hand, a site that produces no original content itself sends its users to other sites for their news content. And when a user follows a link from one of the lead stories on the Google News site, 17% of the coverage was wire content that appeared on some other site while 82% of the coverage was original reporting by the cited news organization, most often newspaper outlets.

Site Differences – Sites Tied to Legacy Media

Two of the sites in the year-long study were tied to legacy media, in particular cable news channels. In what ways do the sites tied to legacy media differ from those who are not likewise connected? And how similar is each to their cable identities?

The CNN.com and MSNBC.com homepages mirror to a certain degree the news tendencies of cable counterparts but augmented with the characteristics of online news such as a greater emphasis on foreign news.

CNN.com is similar to the CNN cable network in that their specialty is in featuring up-to-the-minute news and spends less of its focus on its on-air personalities and more on the ability for users to customize the site. On the CNN.com homepage, the latest headlines are featured prominently on the page with one story usually getting the clear top billing because of a large picture and sizable headline. CNN.com also offers ample opportunities for users to watch streaming video clips that accompany the news stories of the moment. Below the top lists of breaking stories, CNN.com has sections for two headlines for various groups of news (such as “Politics,” “Entertainment,” and, “Science”). The site also has links to blogs written by CNN’s television personalities and information about their programs, but those are not as prominently placed.

MSNBC.com, on the other hand, has built its own identity by being the home for NBC, MSNBC and Newsweek magazine. The site offers a combination of breaking news, often from wire stories, along with longer pieces from Newsweek and prominent links to the various NBC and MSNBC television-related Web sites. Like CNN.com, multimedia features are prevalent on the site, although unlike CNN.com, MSNBC.com will often feature multiple stories on the top of the page with pictures and story teasers rather than focusing on one or two emerging stories only. Beneath the top stories on the page, MSNBC.com also has sections devoted to specific topics, but, unlike CNN.com, the sections include six or more headlines along with multiple video news reports for each section.

A quarter of the lead coverage for CNN.com (25%) was about stories that went beyond the boundaries of the U.S., while only 17% of the lead coverage on MSNBC.com did so.

Top Stories for CNN.com in 2007
Percent of Newshole

Top Stories for MSNBC.com in 2007
Percent of Newshole

Comparing the CNN and MSNBC Web sites, both had the same top story for the year, events on the ground in Iraq. And both sites spent about the same percentage of coverage on the Iraq policy debate (CNN.com at 5% and MSNBC.com at 6%). However, MSNBC.com gave twice as much coverage to the presidential campaign (10%) as CNN.com did (5%). MSNBC.com also gave more coverage to the U.S. economy throughout 2007 (3%) than CNN.com did, which at 1% was not one of the top ten stories of the year on their site.

MSNBC.com’s emphasis on the presidential campaign reflects an identity that the cable channels established this year. (See Cable news investment section for more) In the programs studied throughout 2007, the cable channels devoted almost a quarter of its newshole (24%) (See Cable content section for more) to the campaign, more than any other news outlets studied. While the percentages are smaller online, the priority of politics relative to other news and to other Web sites stands out.

Top Stories of 2007: MSNBC.com and MSNBC

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Similar ratios’ exist in coverage of the policy debate about the war in Iraq. It was one of the most covered stories on both MSNBC.com (No.3) and the programming studied on MSNBC cable (No. 2). But the percent of newshole it garnered was much smaller on the Web site (6%) than the cable channel (16%).

The similar ranking but smaller percentages on the Web site suggest the slightly different role each outlet plays in daily journalism. The cable television news programs, especially ones like Hardball and Countdown, are more about pundit-driven analysis and discussion of one or two news events of the day. The Web site that at least in brand name is associated with the cable channel (they are separate companies produced on separate coasts) is a place more for event-driven coverage of breaking events. This also helps to explain why the reports of the war in Iraq, which were almost all event-driven stories, were the lead story on MSNBC.com at 12% and the policy debate about Iraq, at 16%, was the No. 2 story on the cable channel.

CNN and CNN.com have a closer relationship: they are at least the same company and are produced in the same city, although the television people are not directly responsible for the Web site. And here the contrasts between cable and the Web were not as sharp. For CNN.com, the presidential campaign was the No. 3story of the year (5%) while it was the top story on the cable channel at 10%. Likewise, CNN.com focused more on the events in Iraq (the No.1 story at 11%) while the cable channel focused more on the policy debate about potential planning for the war (No. 2 at 10%).

Top Stories of 2007: CNN.com and CNN

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The most striking difference between CNN and CNN.com’s lead news coverage is in the emphasis on immigration. On the Web site, immigration was the No. 7 story of the year at 2%. However, on the cable channel, immigration was No. 3 at 7% of the airtime. Much of this difference can be explained by the presence of on the cable channel of Lou Dobbs, who devoted 22% of his airtime to immigration. It is clear that the focus Dobbs has on immigration on his cable show does not carry over to the editorial decisions made about the lead stories on the CNN.com Web site.

The focus of the Web sites in this study on international news is even more evident when comparing CNN.com and MSNBC.com to their cable counterparts. CNN.com (at 25%) and MSNBC.com (at 17%) devoted much more coverage to issues not involving the U.S. than did the corresponding cable channels, with CNN only devoting 6% of its airtime to non-U.S. stories and MSNBC giving even less with only 2%.

A Year in the News

Network

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Network news in the last two years has seen a generational transfer in anchors, news bosses at two of the three networks, more declines in audience and further cutbacks in staff.

Does it show? In 2007, did the programs change? Do they differ from each other? And how is network broadcast news, night and morning, similar or distinct from what one would see on cable or elsewhere?

This year, the Project offers its most comprehensive study to date of network news. For the first time, the Project studied every minute of the three commercial networks’ weekday nightly newscasts, as well the “hard news” half hour (the first 30 minutes) for the weekday morning shows. That represents some 27,600 minutes of news in 2007. That analysis builds on snapshot studies we have conducted in seven previous years.¹

This larger examination, a “census” of every weekday rather than a snapshot or sample, finds:

• After CBS initially built more of its evening newscast around its new anchor, Katie Couric, she now plays in some ways a smaller role in her program than her rivals do in theirs. Most notably, she does significantly less of the signature interviewing for which she was known in morning television than do her evening rivals. In many ways, Couric’s role is more circumscribed than the other network evening anchors.

• In its news agenda, however, CBS, whatever its initial changes, now is quite similar to the other programs. There are differences in what the newscast covers versus the others, but those differences are now subtle.

• With all the changes behind the scenes, on the air the three commercial nightly newscasts are structured much as they were under the previous generation of anchors. Audiences seem to have resisted attempts to alter them, which is one reason that Couric’s innovations failed to increase her audience. The nightly newscasts are the last place in television news where the correspondent is a key participant in the newscast, which is built around their written, vetted, edited and produced story packages where words and pictures are carefully matched. Most other television news has moved toward more extemporaneous news delivery.

• Nightly network news continues to offer the broadest range and most traditional or “hard news” agenda on television, clearly distinguishable from that on cable.

• In the mornings, when a narrower slice of the news is presented, the agenda in 2007 was dominated by politics, the war, crime and disasters. CBS’ Early Show stood out for having a lighter news agenda than its rivals.

The Culture of Storytelling Continues at Night

When CBS hired Katie Couric from NBC’s Today Show to become its evening anchor, the network had her fill more of the airtime than her predecessor, particularly by conducting interviews.

The show’s producers apparently wanted to have her play more of the role she had in morning news, where the anchor is also the reporter in most segments, often formatted around one-on-one interviews.

When she took over in September 2006, live interviews were a significant part of the new program, and analyst Andrew Tyndall noted that she was filling a larger part of her newscast than her rivals.

Even as changes began to be made in that initial plan, Couric’s role was significant. In February 2007, in writing about a new set series of interviews on CBS called the American Spirit, in which Couric talked with inspiring Americans, New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote that Ms. Couric is “hoping to enliven the newscast with some of her trademark early-morning pep and pizzazz — the ‘Today’-ification of the ‘CBS Evening News.’ ”

By the end of 2007, with new executives in charge of the newscast, that reliance on Couric had been scaled back. In fact, the opposite was true. Looking at 2007 in total, interviews made up roughly half as much of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as they did on rival newscasts (178 minutes on CBS, 308 minutes on ABC and 371minutes on NBC).

That number might have been even lower, moreover, had CBS in early December not introduced its Primary Questions, a 10-part, favorably reviewed series of interviews with the presidential candidates. (Among the questions: “What one book, other than the Bible, would you bring the White House?”; “Besides your family, what are you most afraid of losing?”; “Who is the single most impressive person you’ve ever met?”— four Democrats said Nelson Mandela and four Republicans said Ronald Reagan.)

If Couric’s strength was once considered, as Washington Post critic Tom Shales suggested the night of her CBS debut, “chiefly her ability as an interviewer,” CBS apparently believes that this did not work for her on the evening news.

That does not mean that Couric’s role has shrunk across the board. According to accounting by analyst Andrew Tyndall, Couric spent as much time as one of her rivals, Charles Gibson, as a reporter herself in taped packages (273 minutes over the course of the year).²

But that means that more of her time on the air than her rivals is circumscribed by editing. Even many of her interviews are now tightly edited. Her Primary Questions segments were taped and edited, making them, in a sense, a hybrid of interview and package.

At least one of the signature skills that Couric was imagined to have brought as an asset to evening news is now considered something to limit.

Story Format Night News by Network
Percent of Newshole

Were there other notable distinctions among the networks?

One that stands out, in contrast with the trend at CBS, is that NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams has moved away somewhat from a reliance on correspondent packages. Just slightly over three-quarters of the time on the NBC was made up in 2007 by these taped stories (77%), the lowest of the three networks.

We found a similar pattern on NBC’s cable sibling, MSNBC. It stood out even among cable channels for nearly abandoning packaged storytelling entirely (just 10% of time studies and a heavier reliance on interviewing (70% of all time studied).

What would explain this? It is possible that the sharing of correspondents between the two channels has contributed to less time for NBC correspondents to put together taped packages. If Andrea Mitchell is doing stand-up reports for MSNBC during the day, and even anchoring some daytime programs, she may be available for a two-way interview with anchor Brian Williams, but not to put an edited piece together.

Does the format matter?

We find evidence that it does. In studies of network nightly news in previous years, one finding was that the stories on these newscasts had a thoroughness of reporting not found in cable or on morning news (2005 State of the News Media). Much of that stemmed, we concluded, from the continuing reliance on taped and edited correspondent packages as the heart of the nightly newscasts.

And whatever the small differences among the three nightly newscasts, that reliance on correspondent storytelling persisted in 2007. It did drop some, and the role of the anchor and the reliance on the live interview and reporter stand-up grew slightly.

But compared to anything else on television news, the nightly newscasts is where viewers can see stories that have been checked and edited, where the words from the correspondents have been carefully written rather than spoken from quick notes, where producers and correspondents have discussed the content of the stories, and the pictures and the words have been carefully matched in an editing room.

In 2007, correspondent packages made up 82% of the time on the nightly newscasts down slightly from 86% in our 2004 sample. The reliance on anchor conducted interviews and reporter live stand-ups grew to more than 8% of time (up from 2% in 2004).

Format of Different TV News Programs
Percent of Newshole

These numbers still distinguish nightly news from morning, where interviews make up a third of the time, and even more so from cable, where the dependence on live programming that is harder to vet or correct makes up nearly 60% of time.

The interview and the use of the live stand-up, the latter a staple of local television news, are controversial in network nightly news. Time is more limited on these programs, which average 18.6 minutes of news each night. Live interviews tend to cede control to the interview subject, and live reporter stand-ups, if not handled judiciously, can simply repeat what is contained in a story.

Consider, for instance, the evening of October 2, a night picked at random. A view of NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams would have seen the program focus at the beginning with events of the day — first a news story about Blackwater Security’s president, Erik Prince, questioned in Congress, followed by a quick update of the third-quarter fundraising totals of the presidential candidates. Then came news about a court finding New York Knicks and its coach and president, Isiah Thomas, liable in a sexual harassment case, a quick tell story on housing sales figures and a story on the U.S. dollar.

A viewer tuning in to the closest thing to a newscast on NBC’s cable channel, MSNBC’s Olbermann program, would have seen a lead story on Democrats proposing a war surtax, a symbolic action that was not going to pass, followed by a follow-up interview about Democrats being unhappy with their party leadership. Then came a story and an interview about Blackwater’s ties to the Bush administration, calling the security firm “the armed wing” of the White House, followed by two stories about a controversy involving Rush Limbaugh.

None of the pieces on NBC Nightly news were live interviews. Three of the first six pieces on Olbermann were. Indeed, the three brief packages were setups to the longer interviews.

Differences among Nightly Newscasts in Topic Agenda

Beyond their differences in structure, the three commercial evening newscasts are in many ways even more similar in their news agenda — what they choose to cover and not cover each night.

Consider a few statistics.

• The three newscasts had the same lineup of the top six stories of the year, with one exception (NBC gave more time to following up Hurricane Katrina.)
• Over the course of the year, out of 2,303 minutes devoted on the three evening news programs to the war in Iraq over, they varied by just eight minutes (CBS 771, ABC 769, NBC 763).
• Each gave about the same percentage of time in 2007 to U.S. foreign policy, to disasters, to education, to government, and more.

The similarities are particularly true when looking at the two most popular programs, ABC and NBC.

The list of the topics on each of these two newscasts for the year does not deviate in order until topic No. 10. On NBC it is the environment, which ranked No. 15 on ABC. And that focus on the environment on NBC reflected in part a corporation-wide decision at General Electric to focus attention on global warming and energy use late in the year. All NBC newscasts devoted special time that week. That weeklong special also coincided with NBC retaking the lead in ratings over ABC.

There are slightly more difference with CBS’ newscast, which is last in ratings.

CBS devoted more time in 2007 to health topics and lifestyle topics (18% of its time) than did either ABC (15%) or NBC (14%).

But broadcast by broadcast, divided over 261 weekday nights (ABC evening was preempted on 3 nights, and CBS evening was preempted on 2 nights), these small percentage differences might be scarcely noticeable. (The difference in between NBC and CBS coverage of non-U.S. foreign events, for example, amounts to just 36 seconds difference a night.)

Were there distinctions in how different networks led their newscasts? Some. NBC led more often with the debate over Iraq policy, but less often with events on the ground in Iraq. ABC was more likely to lead with anti-terrorism issues at home and similar efforts abroad than the others.) But overall, those differences also paled in relation to similarities.

A more meaningful difference among the networks might be the overall time devoted to delivering the news. Of the 30 minutes these programs air, subtract commercials, and “teases” of forthcoming stories and the programs are not equal in size. ABC had 18.1 minutes of news, CBS had 18.7 and NBC had the longest newscast, 18.9 minutes (ABC evening was preempted on 3 nights, and CBS evening was preempted on 2 nights).

This also reflects another change, one we have noted in the past. The proverbial 22 minutes of news in a 30-minute newscast, in other words, has shrunk to an average of 18.6 minutes.³

This declining newshole has been documented in these reports before using data from ADT Research and analyst Andrew Tyndall. (State of the Media 2005)

Differences among Nightly Newcasts by Topic
Percent of Newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
Note: * Other Domestic Affairs includes such things as development, transportation, education, religion, abortion, gun control, welfare, poverty, social security, labor, aging, court/legal system, race and gender issues, etc.

Other domestic affairs includes such issues as development, transportation, education, religion, court/legal system, defense/military (domestic), race/gender/gay issues, poverty, social security, etc.

Top 5 Nightly News Stories

2007, by Network

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The Network News Agenda Over Time

How has the news agenda on the nightly news changed?

Over the years, the Project has traced an arc in the content of the nightly newscasts. The definition of news shifted from a more traditional diet of what some used to call “hard” news in the 1970s and 1980s toward a clear softening of the agenda in the 1990s. For the decade of the 1990s, both Andrew Tyndall and Robert Lichter’s research found that crime, once a largely local story, was the biggest topic on nightly news in the decade, although the crime rate was declining. That raised questions about “tabloidization” in network television. That coincided with the end of the Cold War, and the decline in foreign coverage.

After 9/11, there was a brief but clear turn in the news agenda of nightly news toward foreign affairs again, with anti-terrorism efforts as a clear focus.

What is the agenda now?

The nightly newscasts in 2007 devoted more time to a range of domestic issues, especially health and medicine coverage, than in 2004.⁴ (The number for a host of issues at home rose to 24% of the stories, up from 21% in 2004 and the mid-teens for several years before that.) The newscasts all also devoted 75% more to disasters and accidents than three years earlier, a topic that has ebbed and flowed over the years. All told, they devoted 7% of disaster and accident stories up from 4% in 2004.

Coverage of government, meanwhile, shrank markedly, as it did on other media sectors, to just 5% of the stories on the nightly newscasts, down from 27% in 2004. That number is not unprecedented, but it matches the lowest we have seen in prior snapshots of network news topics.

To some extent, the time that might have been devoted to government activities was swallowed up by attention focused on the Iraq policy debate and the campaign for president. But that does not explain the entire decline. The uptick in coverage of crime (to 6% up from 2%), accidents and such domestic issues as health and medicine also account for part of it.

Does this suggest some lightening or shifting of the news agenda on nightly news, in particular toward medical coverage that is particularly attuned to an older audience that watches nightly news, or toward lifestyle stories about diet and other news you can use?

That judgment is premature. Numbers can move up and down in different years. But certainly features that were once branded staples of the network news, such as those that focused on government waste (NBC’s Fleecing of America), have given way to frequent special series on health.

Commercial Nightly News Topics, Over Time
Percent of All Stories

Totals may not equal100 due to rounding.
Note: *Foreign Affairs in 2007 includes much of Iraq policy debate, U.S. foreign diplomacy and non-U.S. involved foreign events.
#Domestic affairs includes topics such as health and immigration that in other charts are broken out seperately. +Other in 2007 includes media

Nightly News vs. Other Media

Whatever changes may have occurred in the topics in 2007, the three commercial nightly news programs still feature the most traditional hard-news-oriented agenda on commercial television, and in some way the broadest. While cable news has moved toward commentary, with a focus on a narrower range of topics often of a controversial nature, with a dose of tabloid crime and scandal mixed in, the nightly newscasts cover a wider range of topics.

In 2007, one was twice as likely to see coverage of events from abroad that did not involve the U.S. on nightly network news, for instance, than on the several hours a day of cable studied in our sample. There was about half the percentage of crime coverage on nightly news as on cable (6% vs. 13%), more than twice the percentage of economic/business coverage (7% vs. 3%), about a fifth of the celebrity and entertainment coverage (1% vs. 5%).

Topics on Different Media
Percent of newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

The distinctions with mornings are somewhat less pronounced but similar (see Morning News for a more detailed comparison).

Morning Shows

Morning network television programs are markedly different than their evening brethren, so much so that the time slot makes much more difference in determining what viewers see than the network they choose.

For these comparisons, we examine the first half hour of morning news, the “harder news” portion of the programs, the portion most like a “news” program. We examined every weekday of morning news and every minute of evening network news for the year (13,212 minutes for morning network, and 14,455 minutes of evening network).

In 2007, morning programs devoted significantly more of their time than evening news to the presidential campaign (13% vs. 8%). Only cable news and talk radio devoted more of their time to the campaign. Often this coverage had a decidedly different flavor than one might see at night.

Top 5 Stories on Network Morning vs. Network Evening News

2007

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Take, for instance, the CBS’ Early Show’s Candidates Unplugged, series. The one on December 5 was an interview with a Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, in which the candidate talked about liking iPods (he owns two), the Rolling Stones and the rocker John Mellencamp. On the CBS Evening News that night, by contrast, the network reported on Hillary Clinton firing a staffer who had sent attack e-mails against her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, and about a new attack ad by another Republican candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, and Couric did one of her Primary Questions, segments, asking the candidates about their biggest mistakes.

But morning news also devoted more of its time to crime, disasters and celebrity, key ingredients in a more emotional, or what some critics would call a more tabloid news, agenda than nightly news. The morning shows devoted more of their time to crime (10% vs. 6%), celebrity and entertainment (4% vs. 1%) and more to accidents and disasters (11% vs. 7%). Collectively, about a quarter of the first half-hour of morning news programs was devoted to these three, 77% more than on the nightly newscasts. The crime and disaster segments tended to focus on the feelings of the families and victims.

Consider how evening and morning news covered a tornado in Alabama on March 1, 2007. The NBC Nightly News did three stories, a package about the tornado’s destruction, a live report about current conditions in the town, Enterprise, and another live report about meteorologists tracking tornadoes.

The next morning, the Today Show covered the same story by running an interview with two students who were in the school when the tornado hit.

“First of all we are all very happy you are both all right, especially in the wake of what we’ve seen, this destruction,” Matt Lauer began. “Marissa, let me start with you. I think you were in the science hall when this tornado struck. Were you with some other students? Did you hear some sirens? What kind of warning did you get?” And then he asked, “Can you describe, Marissa, what it was like when the twister actually hit the school?”⁵

On October 1, as an example, ABC’s Good Morning America devoted seven minutes in its lead half-hour to the story of a police search for man who taped himself molesting a three-year-old girl. The program covered the story first as a package and then by interviewing the suspect’s ex-girlfriend, who, anchor Chris Cuomo said, “is now struggling to reconcile the images on that tape with the man she thought she knew.” The police search was never covered as a story on the network’s evening news program.

Topics in the News: Commercial Network Morning vs. Evening News
2007, Percent of newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Another comparison also helps explain the difference in the feel of the programs. In total, 11% of the morning shows' first half-hour was devoted to the war in Iraq over all, versus roughly 16% on nightly news.

Differences by Network

Were there measurable differences in the news agendas of the three network morning shows in 2007?

Our analysis suggests the answer is a qualified yes, and again it was the CBS network that stood out. CBS’ Early Show offers viewers a different, and some might say lighter, selection of news in the first half hour.

More of the CBS program during the time studied was devoted to the trio of celebrity, crime and disasters news than on the other networks. Fully 31% of the hours studied of the Early Show (1,267 minutes) were devoted to these subjects, versus 22% on GMA (954 minutes) and 22% on Today (1,013 minutes).

The Early Show also devoted less of its time in the hours studied to more hard news staples such as government and politics. Fully 14% of its time (or 571 minutes) was devoted to those two general topics, compared with 18% on ABC (802 minutes). NBC’s Today show (22%) was the most focused on government and politics (1,035 minutes).

Those numbers highlight another difference in choice that viewers might find among the three morning programs. In general, at least in the first half-hour, NBC’s Today show probably offered the most traditional hard-news-oriented agenda of the three, although it would be a stretch to say it was broad-based. Even on Today, three topics — U.S. foreign policy (mostly the war in Iraq), politics (mostly the election) and accidents/disasters -- made up 41% of the airtime studied.

Topics in the News: Commercial Morning Network News
2007, Percent of Newshole

Totals my not equal 100 due to rounding.

But viewers might not have entirely noticed, at least not if they were taking their cue from the lead stories each morning. Here, ABC’s Good Morning America tended to look a little more traditional.

GMA tended toward leading with foreign and economic news, especially the war, more than its rivals. Of the big stories of the year, the war, foreign events and the economy were the lead story nearly a quarter of the time on GMA (22%), substantially higher than the 13% on Today, and somewhat higher than 17% on the CBS Early Show. Thus even though Today was somewhat more oriented to hard news in the hours studied, it often led with other topics, and moved to those traditional news topics next.

Top 5 Stories on Network Morning Shows

2007, by Network

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

The other difference is in structure. In the mornings, GMA tends to rely more on taped packages and less on interviews, at least in the first half hour of the newscast. NBC’s Today Show, in keeping with what we found in nightly and on cable, leans most heavily on live. Here, CBS fell in the middle.

Story Format Network Morning Shows
Percent of newshole

Footnotes

1. PEJ has looked at the topic agenda of network news in 1977, 1987, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. The 1977, 1987 and 1997 studies looked at all the coverage on the three main network newscasts for one month (March) of each of those years. The 2001 study looked at 15 days of network news. The 2002 study looked at 20 randomly selected days, as did the studies in 2003 and 2004.

2. Analyst Andrew Tyndall defines story categories slightly differently than does PEJ, and along with possible differences on when a story “begins,” that translates into slightly different total minutes over the course of a year different format categories. But both methodologies find a similar constriction in Couric’s interview time.

3. This declining newshole has been documented in these reports before using data from ADT Research and analyst Andrew Tyndall. State of the News Media 2005

4. These longitudinal comparisons of the programs are by percent of stories rather than by percent of time. The earlier studies were conducted that way. Repeated studies, however, have shown that the two different forms of calculating the newscasts yield almost identical results.

5. A day earlier, March 1, Today had done a live standup report on the tornado coming.

Cable

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

For all the time it has to fill, roughly 18 hours of original programming each day, cable news has become in many ways a niche medium that offers viewers narrow formula rather than a broad-based agenda of the events of the day.

That formula in 2007 was a combination of controversial opinion, a dose of tabloid-tinged crime and celebrity, edgy personalities, and, during the daytime, a focus on the immediate.

In emphasis what is defined as significant amid this formula varies significantly, too, by the channel one watches, the time of day and to some extent the program. More than any on other medium we have studied, the definition of news differs depending on the outlet.

• In general, cable news focuses much of its time on three or four topics a day and relies on wires and brief “tell stories” for much of the rest of the news.
• There are distinct differences among the different channels, only some of which reflects the demographic differences of their audiences.
• MSNBC, at least in terms of time spent, was indeed the place for politics in 2007 — by nearly double over its rivals in the percentage of time studied (28% vs. 12% on CNN and 15% on Fox News). Fox, in turn, spent less time on the war in Iraq than the others (10% vs. 18% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN). And it was more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals (28% vs. 19% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN).
• The host-oriented culture of cable, particularly in prime time, now translates into notably different agendas and character even among programs on the same network. Not only does Lou Dobbs have a news agenda of his own on CNN, but so does Anderson Cooper versus Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and Shepard Smith versus Brit Hume on Fox News.
• In a medium that relies heavily on being “live” and not on taped and edited packages prepared by correspondents, MSNBC is the most ephemeral and live-oriented of all, despite its connection to a broadcast news division or perhaps because it must borrow correspondents from its NBC sibling. Only 10% of time studied was made up of taped, edited packages, versus 45% on CNN and 28% on Fox.

There are also two distinct parts of the cable day. Daytime is more focused on crime and disaster. Nighttime increasingly is more about topics that spark controversy and suit the particular audience that tunes in to each channel.

These are some of the findings of our study of cable news, an analysis of 17 shows, 885 hours of cable news over the course of the year, a total of 22,823 stories.

Breadth of Topics

The cable news agenda is measurably different and narrower than other media platforms. With its focus in prime time on talk, it tends toward the political and the controversial, with a clear focus on crime and celebrity mixed in as well.

As an example, cable news spent a smaller percentage of its time than did network evening news covering the broad range of domestic issues, from the environment, to transportation, health care, Social Security, welfare, education, economics, race, gender and more. It also spent half as much of its airtime on the economy and business. And it was among the lowest of media sectors studied in the percentage of time it devoted to foreign affairs that did not involve the U.S. directly.

The medium devoted twice as much of its time to politics and the wide-open campaign for president as network nightly news or cable’s new chief rival for breaking news, news online Web sites, and five times as much on celebrity and entertainment. It also spent twice the percentage of its time on crime.

Collectively, the broad range of domestic issues including the environment, education, transportation, development, religion, domestic terrorism, health care, race — everything but immigration — made up 13% of the time on cable (compared with 26% on network evening news). The three topics of celebrity, crime and disasters, in contrast, accounted for 24% of cable’s time.

To put that into perspective, if one were to have watched five hours of cable news, one would have seen about:

• 35 minutes about campaigns and elections
• 36 minutes about the debate over U.S. foreign policy
• 26 minutes or more of crime
• 12 minutes of accidents and disasters
• 10 minutes of celebrity and entertainment

On the other hand, one would have seen:

• 1 minute and 25 seconds about the environment
• 1 minute and 22 seconds about education
• 1 minute about science and technology
• 3 minutes and 34 seconds about the economy
• 3 minutes and 46 seconds about health and health care

Topics on Cable News vs. Other Outlets
Percent of Newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.
Note: *Other Domestic Affairs includes such things as development, transportation, education, religion, abortion, gun control, welfare, poverty, social security, labor, aging, court/legal system, race and gender issues, etc.

Top 10 Stories of the Year

When it came to specific stories, cable news showed a tendency to take the biggest stories of the year and make them bigger, particularly stories that lent themselves to argument, predictions and political divide. Hence the campaign, a long-running story or conversation, filled 50% more time on cable news than evening network news or than in the newshole for media over all. So did the debate over what U.S. policy on Iraq should be. But events on the ground in Iraq, a story that required people in place engaged in reporting, filled less than half the percentage on the cable programs studied than on network nightly news or the media studied over all, and third of the space readers would have seen on cable’s newest rival, online.

Top 10 Stories in Cable

2007, Channels combined

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Thus while the list of the top five big stories is similar on cable with other media sectors, the nature of the way cable is structured — around talk rather than reporting (see format below) -- alters the nature of the content one sees.

Top Stories: Cable News vs. Other Media
Percent of Newshole

The News Agenda - Daytime vs. Nighttime

Time of day also influenced the news agenda a viewer was likely to see in 2007. The range of stories and topics one saw in the daytime was different than at night, when cable’s well-known talk hosts and personalities fill prime time. During the day, younger hosts, their names not built into the program titles, their experience less clear, sit in the anchor chairs. This is a group of usually physically attractive and often young, on-air “talent.” At night, cable’s better known hosts and personalities fill the time, focusing on topics they particularly care about or fit the formula of their show.

This changes the content. The No. 1 topic in daytime hours studied was crime, the only sector studied where that was true in PEJ’s content studies, where it filled fully 20% of the time studied, nearly double the number at night. Accidents and disasters similarly filled 11% of time studied, again more than double prime time. Celebrity entertainment was larger in daytime than at night by nearly half (7% vs. 4%). Politics and the campaign for president, in contrast, was a smaller story (8% vs. 20% at night).

Government, which does much of its business during the day and may even try to time events to get on live cable TV, was also smaller percentage of time during day period studied than it was at night (filling less than 5% of time versus just under 8% at night).

Topics on Daytime Cable vs. Nighttime Cable
Percent of Newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Differences among Cable Channels

One distinguishing factor of cable is how different the definition of news is on each of the three major channels. This is the only medium studied where we see such contrasts.

Top 5 Stories in Cable

2007, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

By illustration, the No. 1 topic on each of the three channels was different, the only sector where we found this disparity among rival outlets. On MSNBC it was the politics. On Fox, it was crime. On CNN, it was U.S. foreign policy.

Top 5 Topics in Cable

2007, by Channel

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

In simplest terms, MSNBC focused itself around Washington, the campaign and political scandal, often with an eye sharply critical of the Bush administration, to good ratings effect.

Fox was more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals.

CNN tended by degrees to devote somewhat more time across a range of topics, and to rely more on taped edited packages to tell stories, although not nearly to the degree found on network nightly news.

MSNBC, which bills itself as the Place the Politics, in 2007 devoted 25% more of the airtime studied to Washington and political topics than did CNN and 46% more than Fox. Those topics filled fully 63% of the time studied on MSNBC (versus 50% on CNN and 43% on Fox).¹

On Fox, the four topics of crime, celebrity, disasters and media topics alone filled 34% of the airtimes studied. That is 46% more than on CNN and MSNBC. Yet political topics, particularly those involving the Bush administration, were aired far less.

The war in Iraq, by example, filled 10% of the airtime studied on Fox in 2007, compared with 16% on CNN and 18% on MSNBC.

Iraq War Coverage by Channel

2007

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Similarly, the four top political scandals during the year — the firings of the U.S. Attorneys, the CIA leak prosecution of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby Jr., the sexual-advance case against Idaho Senator Larry Craig, and the acknowledgment by Senator David Vitter of Louisiana that he had been involved with an escort service under police investigation for prostitution in the District of Columbia -- filled 3% of the airtime studied on Fox. They filled 4% on CNN and 8% on MSNBC.

The cable channels do have some similarities in format. All lean now in prime time toward marquee names as hosts. And with talk as their primary form of news delivery, they tend toward topics that lend themselves to argument along with an emphasis on breaking news of a visual nature.

But the subjects being discussed or propagated by these hosts and their guests — in other words the news agenda — differs more on cable among the three channels than in any other medium we have studied.

Topics on Cable News by Channel
Percent of Newshole

Totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

The Differences Among Different Programs

Consider the differences among what some regard as the evening newscasts on the three channels. Identifying a signature newscast on cable is not a simple matter. Fox offers two — Shepard Smith’s and Brit Hume’s. MSNBC features Keith Olbermann. In 2007, CNN moved a second airing of Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room into something more akin to this spot by pushing it into the evening.

On Olbermann’s program, the No. 1 topic was U.S. foreign policy (26% of time studied), followed by the activities of the government (23%), with a particular focus on the war, totaling half his airtime.

On Smith’s program, the No. 1 topic is crime (24%) followed by accidents and disasters (12%). Government and foreign policy made up 13%.

On CNN’s newscast, the war in Iraq and foreign policy (30%) and the campaign and politics (21%) came in No. 1 and 2.

So what is the news agenda of cable news? The answer is it depends on the channel, and to some extent on the host of the program.

One other feature of cable news now is that even on programs that bill themselves as general interest news programs, the news agenda varies significantly by program, even on the same network.

Shepard Smith vs. Brit Hume

On Fox, compare the two shows that come closest to being general evening newscasts: Fox Report with Shepard Smith and Special Report with Brit Hume.

They differ as markedly in their rundown of the day’s news as any programs on cable.

Smith’s newscast is a mix of crime, disasters, accidents, with a marked dose of celebrity and entertainment. The war, the rest of the world, the campaign and the government are a smaller portion of the news than in the media over all.

Hume’s program, in contrast, is as focused on politics and government.

“Welcome to Washington. I’m Brit Hume. The federal deficit is down, down more than predictions, down to its lowest level in half a decade. And while his critics continue to find a cloud around that silver lining, President Bush says the best is yet to come,” Hume began his program on October 11.

On Smith’s program, the lead story that night was about the arrest of a 14-year-old in Pennsylvania who allegedly was thinking about shooting up a high school.

Consider the numbers. On Smith’s program, the No. 1 topic is crime (24% of time studied, the highest of any show studied), followed by disasters (12%); and a miscellany of oddball, weather, traffic and accident stories (9%). Celebrity/entertainment is the No. 6 topic (6%).Together these four subjects alone make up 52% of the time studied.

On Hume’s show, in contrast, these are minor topics — 9% of time studied.

Hume’s program is more focused on Washington, in a way that resembles the news one might have seen on the CBS newscasts when Walter Cronkite was the anchorman from 1962 to 1981. The No. 1 topic for Hume in 2007 was U.S. foreign policy (32%), followed by politics (20%), government (10%), and then non-U.S.- involved foreign affairs (8%). Together, these four topics made up 70% of the time studied.

Add the next five topics, all of which intersect with politics — immigration, domestic terrorism, economics, health and medicine, and the environment — and to total rises to 81% of the airtime.

O’Reilly vs. Hannity & Colmes

Fox’s two leading talk programs in the evening also have different news agendas from one another, and are distinctly different from Fox’s news programs.

Those programs, run by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes, spend a good deal of time talking about the media, for instance, small topics on the news shows. They also spend more time on celebrity entertainment than even Shepard Smith. Government is also a topic that gets less attention from the talkers than from the newscasts.

The differences between the two talk shows may be more subtle, but they are still evident. O’Reilly’s news agenda suggests his interests are in some ways more cultural, while Hannity & Colmes’ are more traditionally political.

For O’Reilly, for instance, crime is the No. 1 topic (16% of the time studied vs. 8% on Hannity & Colmes). Immigration, a subject that crosses culture and politics, is also a bigger issue (11% of the programs studied), more than twice as big as for Hannity & Colmes (4%).

Hannity, by contrast, spent more time on politics, by far his No. 1 topic by a factor of three over any other subject (36% vs. 12% on the O’Reilly Factor).

After the politics, domestic and foreign, Hannity and Colmes were somewhat interested in more emotional stories that, while not dominant, cumulatively change the character between the two programs. They spent substantially more time on celebrity entertainment than O’Reilly (11% vs. 8%), and more than twice as much on accidents and disasters (5% vs. 2%). And in the hours studied, the program did no coverage of economics and business.

So is there a Fox formula to the news? Not strictly. There are clearly differences in Fox’s news agenda as opposed to its rivals, which to a significant degree appear to reflect the interests of Fox’s more conservative audience demographics (see Audience).

But there are differences, too, by host, and the programs in Fox’s now steady (and to some extent perhaps aging lineup) that offer viewers some variety.

Those subtle differences now also exist in degrees on the other news channels as well.

CNN Shows

CNN’s prime time lineup in 2007 shifted slightly with the departure of Paula Zahn in August but three general news programs were a foundation of its lineup for the year. (The study does not include Larry King’s interview program, which usually has a single subject each night and tilts toward celebrity interviews.)

Those three news programs, which vary from one another distinctly, are Anderson Cooper 360, Lou Dobbs Tonight and the Situation Room with former Washington beat reporter Wolf Blitzer.

Cooper’s program is more cultural, while Blitzer’s, and even more so Dobbs’, are more political.

Consider the numbers: Five topics on Dobbs’ program — U.S. foreign policy, immigration, politics, government and the military situation at home — make up 70% of the hours studied. (They filled 40% on Cooper’s.)

Dobbs’ No. 1 story of the year far beyond any other was immigration, accounting for nearly a quarter of all the airtime studied (22%).

And if anyone thought Dobbs separates his commentary from his reporting, the video offers a different impression.

“Tonight crushing defeat for President Bush and the Senate’s Democratic leadership on amnesty, a glorious victory for the American people,” Dobbs began June 28, the night the immigration bill failed.

Cooper’s program spends more time on stories with a strong emotional or cultural appeal — crime (his No. 1 topic), accidents and disasters, celebrity entertainment, health and lifestyle fill 37% of the programs studied. Those subjects, by contrast, make up just 15% of the Situation Room and 13% on Dobbs.

Often, Cooper is on the scene of these stories, getting involved:

On February 2, news broke about tornadoes that hit Florida and caused a lot of destruction. Cooper was there.

“You were talking about strength and courage, well, the people here are exhibiting a lot of that, strength and courage, tonight,” he opened his show, speaking to Larry King, something Cooper does to try to keep more of King’s audience. “Nothing really prepares you for this, Larry, not to see it, certainly not to live it. They get hurricanes in this part of the country, of course. Yet, even houses built to take a Category 3 or 4 storm could not stand up to what happened here overnight.”

His No. 1 story of the year was the campaign in total (13%), but in any given week, if one wanted to hear about O. J. Simpson, the aftermath of Katrina, Don Imus, or the trapped miners on CNN, Cooper was the most likely place to find them.

MSNBC Shows

On MSNBC, even as it tries to position itself around the topic of politics, there are unmistakable gradations.

In prime time, Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews were so particularly focused on the game of politics that no other programs studied came close. But MSNBC’s top-rated show, Keith Olbermann, is actually more focused on governing and the activities of the Bush administration.

Olbermann spent nearly a quarter of the time studied on government (23%), nearly triple the time on Carlson (8%) and double Matthews (12%). (In March 2008, MSNBC removed Carlson from its lineup and replaced him with David Gregory, an NBC News reporter. Gregory began a new show called Race for the White House.)

Much of Olbermann’s emphasis on government has to do with Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq. Nearly four in ten of 125 Olbermann programs studied over the year led with the war, more than triple the next most popular lead story, the firing of the U.S. attorneys.

On two-thirds of the nights studied, Olbermann opened with a story that offered the opportunity for him to look askance at the Bush administration over its antiterrorism tactics or other disputed issues.

“Good evening,” he began on May 15. “The etymology is unclear, but the phrase is politically apt, especially tonight. We’re checking for tire treads on the just-resigned deputy attorney general, Paul McNulty, after he got rolled under the wheels by his erstwhile boss, Alberto Gonzales,” and then without starting a new sentence he turned to another White House controversy involving the World Bank, saying, “the White House today indicating it might be willing to give Paul Wolfowitz a glimpse of pavement and the oncoming vehicle.”

In contrast, Tucker Carlson and Chris Matthews were focused on the race for president and politics rather than the conduct of Bush Administration. Carlson spent 47% of time studied on politics and the election and Matthews 44%. (Olbermann spent 16%.)

The Carlson and Matthews shows stood out in cable for the similarity of their focus. Both opened their programs nearly four nights out of ten studied about the presidential campaign and two nights with the Iraq war debate.

But the character of their shows differed from the personalities of the two hosts. Carlson offered what he called a libertarian critique while Matthews is a former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill. But the more striking differences were stylistic. Matthews is famous for asking questions and then interrupting his guests to offer his own answers. Picking one night at random, November 26, the transcripts show that while Carlson interrupted his guests three times, Matthews did it 13.

If there was a consistent strain on MSNBC, it was the war and U.S. foreign policy, something about which their liberal and conservative critics tended to express objections to. When he was still on in the evening, Joe Scarborough, a Republican, spent 31% of his time on the subject, Olbermann 26%, but other shows were not far behind (Hardball spent 20% of the time on the subject and Carlson 19%).

Live Reporting Lives On

Much of the character of cable, and of each channel, is derived from how the time is structured, that is, the format of the programs.

In general, cable news continues to be dominated by the culture of live, extemporaneous journalism, but that differs substantially by network.

How Cable Does its Reporting

Story Format, by Channel and Overall

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Overall, of the 885 hours studied, 496 (56% of the time) were unedited and unrehearsed, with in interviews (usually by anchors) or live stand-ups by correspondents. That is even higher than we identified in past years. The medium, as we have noted in earlier years, “has all but abandoned what was once the primary element of television news, the written and edited story.”

About half as much time, 30%, on the cable programs studied was made up of correspondent packages. Compare that to network nightly newscasts, in which 82% of time is taken up by such packages, or even morning news, where half of the time studied made up of edited packages.

But the notion that cable takes you live to watch events for yourself is in many ways overstated. In all, only 3% of the time covered live events such as press conferences. (About 1% was spent on banter between anchors, weather and other chat.) This compares with 6% in live events the last time we examined the structure of cable news, in 2004.

Story Format on Cable News vs. Network News
Percent of Newshole

The emphasis on live thus cannot be explained by the desire to go continually for substantial periods of time to show viewers live events. Rather, the nature of time on cable news appears to be more on creating the impression that things are being reported as they happen. Producing programs in a live, unedited and essentially extemporaneous model is also cheaper.

And it means that a central figure in cable news, particularly during the daytime, is the “booker,” the often-young staffer who finds guests who can go on air for interviews or panels.

Despite the emphasis on live, the amount of updating, our earlier studies have found, is minimal, and the emphasis on live cable news has resulted in walking away from the capacity to review, verify, edit, choose words carefully and match those words to pictures.

Audiences are even less likely to find verified, edited journalism at certain times of the day. Daytime cable is more than half as likely to have edited packages. Just 14% of the daytime programming studied was made up of such produced packages. Instead, fully 70% was made up of live, extemporaneous programming.

In the evening, roughly a third (34%) of the time is spent on packaged pieces. This is down from what we found in 2004 when 42% of time was made up of stories that had been edited and taped.

Differences in Format by News Channel

Yet the some of most substantial differences in the structure of cable news exist in the distinctions among the three channels.

MSNBC, perhaps because it has fewer staffers and correspondents of its own and instead “rents” them from NBC (see News Investment), relies substantially more on unscripted, live unedited news delivery. Fully 80% of the time on MSNBC is “live” and unscripted, by far the highest of the three cable channels. It is 44% on CNN, and 59% on Fox.

Most of that time studied on MSNBC involved people doing interviews (70%). Compare that number to 28% on CNN and 45% on Fox.

CNN and Fox, on the other hand, are the near reverse of each other when it comes to interviews versus packaged reports.

CNN, the first all-news cable channel in the country, sticks more to the network news style of packaged pieces. Close to half (45%) of its time is spent on packaged pieces. While this is still about half the number found on the traditional broadcast network evening news programs, it is by far the highest among the cable channels. And those packages on CNN tend also to be longer (an average of 2.9 minutes on the programs studied, versus 2.4 on its rivals).

There are differences between the daytime and evening programming here. Packages were fewer during daytime than at night (24% vs. 50%) and live reporter stand-ups were heavier (31% vs. 10%).

Anderson Cooper’s program is particularly inclined to packages, on a wide range of topics, from visiting the Congo, to Nicaragua, to the lives of Marines in Iraq, to an autistic woman who posts video on YouTube.

On Fox, slightly more than a quarter of time studied was made up of edited packages (28%). And again there were more packages at night (31%) than during the day (15%) and more stand-ups in daytime (21% vs. 8%).

On MSNBC, at least on the general interest news programs studied, the edited news story has all but disappeared, making up slightly less than 10% of the time. Here, too, there were differences in daytime vs. night. In daytime, MSNBC relies more on reporters to do live stand-ups (18% vs. 2% in the evening) and even less on packages (3% vs. 12%). But in both parts of the day, live delivery still fills up 80% of the time.

(At 10 p.m. Eastern, MSNBC does air taped reported programming, a variety of documentaries under different names, including MSNBC Investigates and MSNBC Reports. These documentaries are often produced through the Dateline unit at NBC and are both original and previously aired segments.)

Story Format on Cable News Channels
Percent of Newshole

Footnotes

1. This includes elections/politics, U.S. foreign affairs, government, military, immigration, and domestic terrorism.

A Year in the News

Radio

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

One of the big events in the pre-primary phase of the presidential campaign was an October 30, 2007, debate in Philadelphia where then-frontrunner Hillary Clinton experienced the first concentrated attacks from her Democratic rivals.

In the media generally, according to the Project’s News Coverage Index, the campaign that week accounted for about one-sixth of all the news coverage, and much of that acknowledged the rough-and-tumble nature of that debate. The New York Times reported that Clinton came under “withering attack” on everything from “candor” to “electability.” “After getting punched around in Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton is still acting tough,” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported.

But in the world of talk radio, the Philadelphia debate was the starter’s gun for something much bigger. The talkers devoted more than 40% of their airtime to the campaign that week. And for them, Clinton wasn’t just a combatant in that debate. She was the big loser.

“She’s blowing this big time… playing the gender card,” declared conservative host Rush Limbaugh, who was responding to complaints from the Clinton camp that her rivals had ganged up on her. Added conservative radio talker and Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity: “Last night’s debate in Philadelphia may soon become known as the great Hillary debacle.” Clinton even got whacked by syndicated liberal host Ed Schultz, who accused her of “whining.”

In many ways, the Philadelphia encounter was a classic example of how talk radio operated, at least in 2007, according to an examination of the top talk radio shows throughout the year.

One clear finding of this examination is that the major personalities in the medium tend to seize on a few major news events each week and amplify them for their own purposes. Many weeks, the top stories in the media generally are roughly twice as big in the talk radio universe.

Generally, those events are then run through an ideological filter and used to create a narrative about good guys and bad guys, winners and losers. That process is fairly similar among both liberal and conservative hosts. It is, at its core, a medium of three P’s–personality, persuasion and polarization.

These are just some of the findings of this study, which included almost 220 hours of talk radio content from 2007, some 4,100 different segments, from five of the leading hosts on both sides of the ideological spectrum.

Among other findings:

• Talk radio was consumed with elections and politics in 2007 (more than a quarter of the airtime studied). The second-biggest talk topic was the media themselves, which accounted for about one out of every six minutes of conversation . In almost half the weeks in 2007, the lead story in talk radio got about twice as much play as the No. 1 story in the media over all.
• Conservative hosts were also fixated on Hillary Clinton, and they weren’t flattering. A study early in the year found she had generated almost three times as many segments on conservative talk as any other candidate, and almost 90% were negative. From July through the end of the year, she was the lead newsmaker in talk radio .
• Among the subjects that generated minimal coverage on talk radio in 2007 were foreign events that did not involve the U.S and a host of domestic issues. Combined coverage of the legal system, business, transportation, education and science and technology filled only 2% of the talk radio newshole.
• Talk radio is not tabloid. Crime and celebrity news filled only about 5% of time studied.
• Radio news headlines (from CBS and ABC) were in many ways a solid supplement to the narrow and selective talk news agenda. The brief hourly headline reports lacked depth but offered a broad and evenly balanced menu of topics. And the story noticeably absent was the 2008 presidential contest. It accounted for just 2% of the time here, a fraction of the attention it got from the talk radio realm. The headlines were also much more than just anchors reading wire copy. Nearly half (46%) were packaged pieces often with reporters from the field and with sound “actualities” or quotes from sources.

In its modern incarnation in the past two decades, talk radio has been a business dominated by conservative voices. While that is still true, liberals have begun to make their mark in the industry in recent years, and the 2004 launch of the Air America network, despite its problems, appears to have helped.As part of its weekly News Coverage Index in 2007, the Project examined the first 30 minutes of the programs from the three conservative talk hosts with the biggest audiences according to Talkers Magazine — Rush Limbaugh (estimated 13.5 million listeners a week), Sean Hannity (12.5 million) and Michael Savage (8 million.) On the Democratic side, the Project looked at two leading liberal hosts, Ed Schultz (3.25 million) and Randi Rhodes (1.5 million).

Talk Radio’s Amplification

The most striking characteristic of talk radio is its tendency for hosts to seize on the news and amplify those events. The hosts might suggest they are analyzing them, or offering a deeper level of clarity and truthfulness. Critics might suggest the hosts are not so much reporting the news as exploiting it.

Whatever one’s view, talk radio tends to amplify the handful of stories best suited to debate and division. Typical was the week of May 13-18, 2007, when several important events — Congressional votes on Iraq war funding, the death of Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, the immigration bill, the second Republican presidential debate, and a deadly ambush in Iraq — were all part of the five leading stories in the mainstream media. Each one consumed between 5% and 10% of the newshole and together, they constituted 40% of the week’s overall coverage.

Top 5 Stories for the Week of May 13-18, 2007

Percent of Newshole

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

On the radio talk shows, however, just three of those stories — the Iraq policy debate, the campaign and immigration — consumed 50% of the airtime. Many of the other stories of the week got short shrift.

That same trend is evident over time. The top-two broad topic areas in talk radio in 2007 — elections/politics and the media — by themselves filled 44% of the airtime studied over the year. They made up 16% of the overall press coverage.

Four topics accounted for nearly two-thirds of all the time on talk radio -- politics/elections, media, U.S. foreign policy and government -- about 60% more than they did in the media generally.

Top Broad Story Topics: Talk Radio vs. Media Overall
Percent of Newshole

The agenda also differed in its nature.

A major focus of talk radio is the media itself, including the talk radio hosts talking about themselves as victims of attack. Media, the No. 2 talk subject of the year, filled 16% of airtime studied, about six times as much as in the media over all (3%). Elections/politics at 28% was the No. 1 talk topic of the year compared to 13% and No. 2 over all in the media.

Foreign events that did not involve the U.S. directly were largely absent in the discussion on talk radio (2% of time studied compared to 11% in the media over all). Crime, the No. 4 story at 7% in the media over all, was No. 5 on talk radio, but only about half as big at 4%.

Talk radio, however, is also notable for the degree to which, at least in the hours studied, it was not much concerned with two classic elements of the tabloid media formula — crime and celebrity. Those two topics made up about 5% of time studied in talk radio, half of the 10% of the media over all.

This tendency toward amplification also means that the talk radio is particularly narrow. The combined coverage of the legal system, business, transportation, education, and science and technology, accounted for a mere 2% of the talk radio airtime in 2007. The media over all, which still did not cover them extensively, devoted 7% to those issues last year.

In a year in which we have concluded that the media agenda in general was narrow, talk radio focused on an even smaller slice of that pie.

Top Stories : Talk Radio vs. Media Overall
Percent of Newshole

News Through the Prism of Ideology:

On March 29, 2007, former Justice Department official Kyle Sampson offered damning testimony about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, telling Congress that Gonzales was more involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys than he had acknowledged.

On the talk radio airwaves, liberal talk hosts Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes eagerly jumped on the Gonzales story. In the airtime examined by PEJ, conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage uttered barely a peep on the matter.

Almost two months later, the announcement of a compromise on immigration legislation galvanized conservative radio hosts who labeled it an “amnesty” bill. Sean Hannity declared that “you cannot begin your career or life as an American by first breaking the law.” Michael Savage said: “We’re not giving away the sovereignty of America. This is the Alamo right now.”

On that subject, their liberal counterparts were virtually silent.

It comes as no surprise that liberal and conservative hosts would have sharply differing views on the war in Iraq or the presidential race or a host of other subjects. But another way in which the ideological wars on talk radio play out is through the selection of stories themselves. In an industry in which hosts much prefer to attack the enemy rather than defend the ally, ideology determines what subjects are even up for discussion.¹

Immigration, a hot-button issue for many conservatives, was the third-biggest topic (at 6%) in conservative talk radio in 2007, right behind the campaign and the Iraq policy debate. Liberal talkers were much less interested, devoting only 1% of their airtime to what was their 10th-most popular story. The third-hottest story among liberal talkers (4%) was domestic terrorism, as they criticized the Bush administration on issues such as torture and electronic surveillance. Conservatives, who tended to back White House policy on terrorism, devoted only 1% of their airtime to that subject.

Not surprisingly, liberal hosts were far chattier about the U.S. attorney firings and the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case that led to the conviction of Vice President Cheney’s aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby Jr., since both were embarrassing to the administration. The arrest of Larry Craig, the conservative Republican Senator accused of sexual overtures to an undercover police officer, was also a much hotter topic on liberal talk.

Story Selection in 2007

Conservative vs. Liberal Talk Radio

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2007

Conversely, conservative talkers spent a lot more time on the subject of global warming — criticizing its chief advocates, particularly Al Gore. They also invested much more energy on the new Democratic-led Congress, whose leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were a frequent target for criticism.

And then there is the Hillary Clinton factor. Her history with the conservative talk hosts goes back to the 1990’s when she was First Lady and presided over an unsuccessful attempt to remake the nation’s health care system. (Conservative talk radio’s ascendancy coincided to a significant extent with Bill Clinton’s 1992 election and the hosts decided to make his administration a primary target.) Ever since Hillary Clinton’s January 2007 announcement that she intended to follow in her husband’s footsteps, she has been a prime subject on talk radio, more specifically a prime target of conservative talkers.

For the first five months of 2007, Clinton generated almost three times as many segments on conservative talk radio than any other candidate, a PEJ report on early election coverage found. And 86% of those segments on the conservative air waves about her were negative in tone. In that period, she did not fare particularly well on the liberal talk radio either, but was a far less frequent topic of discussion. A study of the summer months of 2007 found that Clinton was a lead newsmaker in more than four times as many talk radio segments on the campaign as the next closest candidate, Barack Obama. And again, it was largely conservative talk radio’s fixation with her driving that coverage.

Discussing some purported problems with the Clinton campaign on a December edition of his show, Rush Limbaugh opted for a Wizard of Oz wicked witch analogy. People have been e-mailing all morning “asking me ‘Do you believe it’s the end for Hillary?’ ” Limbaugh remarked on Dec. 14. “Until I see the house fall on her… and the legs curl up [and] the body in the casket, she is not dead, she is not finished.”

That ethos was also summed up by Hannity, who during the campaign nicknamed his program The Stop Hillary Express.

Conservative Talk and the Immigration Jihad

The ability of talk hosts to influence voters may be an open question, but on one important legislative matter in 2007, the conservative hosts seemed to have had an impact. In the six weeks between the May 17 introduction of immigration legislation and the bill’s June 28 demise, the talk hosts were in the forefront of a relentless assault on the measure. Day in and day out, Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage — with considerable help from CNN’s Lou Dobbs — railed against the immigration bill and its supporters. So intense was the barrage that among conservative radio hosts, the immigration debate was the No. 1 topic in the second quarter, filling 16% of the airtime. (The second-biggest topic was the presidential campaign at 13%).

What made the conservative talkers’ war on the immigration bill more noteworthy was their willingness to butt heads with some key Republicans who had often been allies, including President George Bush. So exasperated was Republican Senator Trent Lott that he complained openly during the immigration debate that “talk radio is running America.”

That only made Lott a bigger target. “What are we going to do about Mississippi Senator Trent Lott... one of the engineers of the Senate immigration bill, the amnesty bill?” Limbaugh asked his listeners. “Senator Lott’s out there saying the problem with this is talk. Now what does that mean?”

On his radio program, Hannity defended his stance by drawing firm distinctions between conservatives and Republicans. “We stand up for our principles regardless of any party affiliation,” he said. “We find ourselves now at odds with Republicans for one reason and one reason only…. They keep compromising their values.”

That was same argument that conservative talk hosts would make later in explaining their campaign against John McCain, who became the Republican party’s presidential nominee but was deemed too liberal for their tastes.

Differences among Hosts of the Same Ideology:

The conservatives:

Naturally, the most obvious arguments and differences are between the liberal and conservative talk hosts. But a close examination also reveals that there are some significant differences among talkers of the same ideologies.

In terms of news agendas, there were some noticeable differences among the three big conservative hosts. Hannity is most clearly a Washington creature, spending 45% of the first half hour of his program on the topic of politics/campaigns. That is about 150% as much attention as Limbaugh gave the subject in his top 30 minutes and nearly three times as much coverage as Savage offered. Savage, in contrast, whose program has more in-your-face vitriol, seems more culture-oriented and less political. Topics such as lifestyle, immigration, religion, race and gender all get more time on his 30 minutes of air-time (23%) than from Limbaugh (8%) or Hannity (9%). Limbaugh is harder to pin down, but in some ways encompasses, with more wit and less overt anger, combinations of both. But the differences that often stand out the most are stylistic. Limbaugh is a godfather of modern conservative talk and a very influential figure in conservative circles. (Many credited him with a role in the conservative revolution that swept the Republicans into power in the 1994 Congressional elections and he is often characterized as the leading representative of the talk-show wing of the Republican Party.)

Limbaugh’s on-air style is relaxed, conversational and flecked with humor, or at least sarcasm. He has a considerable skill for self-promotion and injecting himself into the middle of major political controversies, a classic example being the “phony soldiers” furor that erupted in September 2007. At the time, Democrats were smarting over congressional resolutions condemning an ad from the liberal group, MoveOn.org, characterizing the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, as “General Betray Us.” In a September 26 on-air phone conversation about anti-war sentiment, a caller said that media “never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and spout to the media.” Limbaugh interrupted, saying, “the phony soldiers.” Limbaugh’s use of the term “phony soldiers” was quickly attacked as an effort to discredit troops who might express doubts about the war and Democrats in Congress introduced a measure condemning the talk host.

Limbaugh countered that his “phony soldiers” remark referred only to one veteran who had fabricated stories about Iraq atrocities. And in a creative response to this dispute, Limbaugh took the letter of complaint about him signed by 41 Democratic senators and auctioned it on eBay, with Limbaugh matching the top bid and the money going to charity. The final bid: $2.1 million. On his show, Limbaugh played a clip of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a major critic in the “phony soldiers” battle, actually lauding the Limbaugh auction as “worthwhile cause.” It was typical of Limbaugh’s knack for making himself part of the story.

Younger and newer on the scene than Limbaugh, Hannity, not only has the bully pulpit of a syndicated talk radio show, but is also co-host of the Fox News Channel’s nightly Hannity & Colmes show where he faces off against liberal Alan Colmes. Hannity and Limbaugh seem quite close on many issues and they spent much of the year battering Hillary Clinton. Almost in sync, they both shifted targets as the Republican primary fight went on, becoming sharply critical of John McCain and Mike Huckabee for being too liberal and thus, becoming the favorite Republican candidates of the liberal mainstream media. Their preferred Republican candidates clearly were Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney, two politicians who dropped out after failing to meet expectations.

The differences between Hannity and Limbaugh appear to be more about style than substance. Hannity tends to be more overtly pugnacious and direct, purveying more of a street-fighting sensibility than Limbaugh, who tends to favor more linguistically intricate soliloquies and ornate reasoning.

The real wildcard among conservative talkers is the San Francisco-based Savage, who is more of a contrarian and loose cannon than either Limbaugh or Hannity. On occasion, he has even taken what can only be characterized as a liberal view of an issue.

When Haliburton, the big military contractor once led by Dick Cheney, decided to open a headquarters in Dubai, Limbaugh defended the decision, charging that the company “is one of the footballs kicked around by the mad, insane left.” But Savage, who attacked the move as an example of the unfettered power of big business, played a clip of President Eisenhower’s famous speech warning of the rise of a “military-industrial complex.” When a student was subdued with a Taser while being disruptive during a John Kerry appearance at the University of Florida, Savage called the campus police “fascist,” and declared that “I don’t want to live in a country where even a left-wing student gets tasered for asking a question.” Savage also remarked that making Barry Bonds the villain in baseball’s steroid scandal “looks like racism to me,” in effect making a classic liberal argument by using a charge of racism in Bonds’ defense .

At the same time, the volcanic Savage is more likely than any host to explode and use scorched-earth rhetoric to make his points. He once likened the wave of immigration in the U.S. to the battle at the Alamo and on another occasion, predicted that many liberals would “die in their own vomit.” He expressed disappointment that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “was not gutsy enough” to make an obscene gesture to Syrian President Bashar Assad on a trip to Damascus. And he denounced those who questioned General David Petraeus during a Congressional hearing as “those slimy, backstabbing, anti-American scum called Democrats.”

Other aspects of Savage’s behavior are unorthodox as well. To protest the media’s extensive coverage of the tabloid Anna Nicole Smith saga, he began reading on the air from “Once Upon a Time in the Catskills” a memoir about the summer of 1958 designed to hark back to a simpler, more innocent time in America. To honor the passing of tenor Luciano Pavarotti, he played classical music, something you don’t usually hear on talk radio.

Top Stories : Conservative Talk Hosts
Percent of Newshole

The liberals:

On the liberal/Democratic side, the North Dakota-based Schultz and New Yorker Rhodes are distinct from each other as well.

First, there were some differences in news agendas. At 18% of the first 30 minutes of his airtime in 2007, Schultz devoted more than twice the attention to the 2008 campaign than Rhodes did (8%). Rhodes was more concerned with the two leading threads of the Iraq war — the policy debate and events inside Iraq — than Schultz, devoting 19% of her newshole to those subjects compared with 13% for Schultz.

But the biggest contrast between the two is stylistic, with Schultz’ moderate Midwestern mores clashing with Rhodes’s Brooklyn brashness and ideological bomb-throwing.

One example of their divergent approaches was the reaction to news that Larry Craig, a conservative Republican Senator from Idaho, had been arrested for making a sexual overture to an undercover police officer in a Minneapolis airport. Rhodes went on the offensive, accusing Craig of being an “anti-homosexual homosexual” and attacking his Republican colleagues who quickly distanced themselves from him as hypocrites. For Schultz, the issue was far different. “The thing that bothers me the most about the Craig thing is that something happened with law enforcement and it went unreported to the Ethics Committee or Republican leadership,” he said. Craig “shouldn’t have the liberty… to be able to hide an arrest.”

Top Stories : Liberal Talk Hosts
Percent of Newshole

On another show, Schultz announced that he liked all the Democratic candidates, the kind of positivity one usually does not here on talk radio. “There isn’t one up there I wouldn’t vote for,” he said. “I’m just a big cheerleader today, aren’t I?”

Rhodes’ elbows and rhetoric are often sharper. She dubbed the First Lady “Crazy Eyes Laura Bush” and voiced her opinion that Bush “had a face lift.” She mocked John McCain’s assertion that the security situation inside Iraq had improved by declaring that during his stay in Iraq “John McCain had more bodyguards with him than P. Diddy getting to the MTV Awards.” At one point, she voiced her displeasure at General Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker by characterizing them as a “tag team of liars.”

Rhodes was involved in a strange drama back in October, when she suffered significant facial injuries in a fall in New York City. The next day, another liberal host told listeners that Rhodes had been assaulted and raised the specter of a deliberate attack by “the right-wing hate machine.” Rhodes then returned to the airwaves and said that “I don’t know if someone hit me from behind or if I just fainted.” She was not able to clear up the mystery, but the episode offered further proof that in talk radio, everything is about politics.

Radio News Headlines: Brief but Broad

When the 5 o’clock CBS News aired on April 16, 2007, the depth of that day’s tragedy had become clear. In the worst shooting incident in American history, a murderous rampage had left 33 people dead on the campus of Virginia Tech. The newscast led with an update from the scene, followed by a White House reaction from President Bush and devoted a full two minutes to the story, a very long time for the briskly paced radio headlines format.

But even with Virginia Tech dominating, the five-minute newscast featured seven stories that quickly traversed the news landscape—including a jury verdict for a Hurricane Katrina victim; questions about an arthritis drug; Boston Marathon race results; closing stock prices; a terrorism-related trial in Miami; and fears of a cell phone-transmitted virus in Afghanistan.

That newscast offered a smorgasbord of news topics typical of the platform: crime, domestic events, medicine, sports, economics and foreign affairs.

In 2007, the Project for Excellence in Journalism examined these top-of-the-hour radio newscasts from CBS and ABC and found that in their own way, they were models of diversity, brevity and efficiency. These headline services — usually marking the top of the hour on radio talk, news and information stations — are an important force in radio in America, a primary source of news for stations of all kinds of spectrums. And in the hundreds of stations around the country that categorize themselves as “news and talk,” such as the ones that carry major talk show hosts, these headlines represent the news.

In general, the study finds, they offer an impressively broad if quick look at the day’sevents, Cliff Notes to the news. What is absent is depth, any kind of nuanced analysis or comparison of multiple angles on any given issues. But the sense of scale, or ordering of news by importance, is more often found here in the headlines than on the talk programs that often follow.

The news headlines are designed for their well-defined niche, serving time-pressed commuters in their cars, multi-tasking homemakers in the kitchen or those that want to listen mostly to music while still being plugged into the news of the day. They are straightforward and delivered without attitude or agenda.

For all the terrain they cover in a short period, these newscasts are more than rip-and-read exercises in which smooth-sounding anchors regurgitate news or wire stories. The Project’s examination of these reports found that the largest component, 46% of the airtime, consisted of prepared news packages in 2007, often with reporters from the field and with sound “actualities” or quotes from sources. About 32% was made up of live comments or reporting from staff journalists. And only 21% of the time was spent with the anchor functioning as storyteller or reader.

Format of News Radio Headlines
Percent of Newshole

When it comes to news agendas, one striking element of the radio headlines is the subject that did not get very much coverage, the 2008 presidential contest. In a year in which the media were consumed by the campaign, elections/politics was only the 10th-biggest topic area in the headlines, accounting for just 3% of all the airtime. By means of comparison, it was the No. 2 topic (at 13%) in the media over all for 2007 and in the world of talk radio elections/politics represented the top subject area, consuming 28% of the airtime.

Top Broad Story Topics: News Radio Headlines vs. Talk Radio vs. Media Overall
Percent of Newshole

The trend toward limited coverage of the campaign was confirmed when the news headlines were analyzed more narrowly, by individual story rather than the more general topic category. The 2008 campaign was only fourth-biggest radio headlines story (filling 2% of the airtime), compared with No. 1 for the media over all (at 11% of the newshole) and No. 1 on talk radio (17%).

What the radio headlines do deliver is a broad and balanced news menu. U.S. international news, driven primarily by the war in Iraq, topped the topic list (filling 13% of the newshole). That was followed closely by crime (10%), disasters and accidents (10%), economics (10%), foreign events not related to the U.S. (7%) and health/medicine (7%).

That kind of balance in topic selection distinguishes the headlines from the media over all, with its heavier emphasis on three major categories — U.S. international news (17%), elections/politics (13%) and foreign non-U.S. (11%). And it represents a sea change from the world of talk radio, where the pre-occupation with elections/politics (28%) and media (16%) accounted for nearly half the newshole.

Looking at the radio headlines by their coverage of big stories, the editorial balance is even more obvious. The top story of the year, the policy debate over Iraq, was separated from the No. 10 story, rising gasoline prices, by a mere 6 percentage points.

Top Stories: News Radio Headlines vs. Talk Radio vs. Media Overall
Percent of Newshole

The attention given to rising gas prices, a story the public followed very closely this year, highlights another factor that distinguished the radio headlines. The headlines devoted a large portion of the newshole, 10%, to the subject of economics. (For the media over all in 2007, economics was the eighth-biggest subject, at 4%.) Some of that is the result of the dutiful daily reporting of the numbers on Wall Street. But given the fact that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the slowing economy had by early 2008 emerged as a primary campaign topic, perhaps even eclipsing the Iraq war, the emphasis on economics suggests some solid news judgment at play.

Despite its ability to deliver a brisk news digest, there are natural limits to relying on radio headlines for the bulk of one’s news diet. The average length for a radio headlines story in 2007 studied by the Project for Excellence in Journalism was just under 25 seconds. And given that the lead story often gets more in-depth treatment, many of the others are reduced to quick synopses. On the evening of April 16, 2007, for example, the CBS broadcast devoted slightly more than two minutes to an update on the Virginia Tech tragedy. But five of the remaining six stories in that newscast each took less than 25 seconds. The three stories immediately following the Virginia Tech update on the ABC headlines service that day were each under 10 seconds in length.

While sometimes enhanced with live or taped reporting from the scene, the headline stories are still too brief to offer listeners much nuance or to evaluate complicated issues. A more detailed 2006 study of news in three markets in the U.S. found that most of these stories made almost no attempt to offer listeners much context, explore different elements or try to make any sense of how stories might affect them.²

Footnotes

1. Each day, on the conservative side, the PEJ studied the first 30 minutes of Rush Limbaugh’s show and rotated between the first half-hour of Sean Hannity’s and Michael Savage’s shows. On the liberal side, PEJ rotated between the first half-hour of Randi Rhodes’ program and Ed Schultz’s program each day. In total, the Project examined approximately 7.5 hours of talk radio per week.

2. See state of the News Media 2006, http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2006/narrative_daymedia_radio.asp?cat=9&media=2.

A Year in the News

Ethnic

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Content Analysis