In 2008, the news agenda in the mainstream media shrank sharply, the press was late in picking up on the economic collapse and the war in Iraq all but disappeared from the news.

A year earlier, two stories—the Iraq war and the early days of the presidential campaign—accounted for more than a quarter of all the news coverage studied by PEJ, crowding out many other stories. That raised the question of whether these were such important stories that they demanded that level of coverage, or whether the fragmenting media culture tended, perhaps paradoxically, to focus on a limited number of stories.

If the news agenda was narrow in 2007, it constricted considerably more in 2008. The two top events—a dramatic and precedent-setting election and a metastasizing economic crisis—filled half the total newshole studied, almost double the amount of the top two stories a year earlier, and leaving little room for much else.

To put that in perspective, in 2008 coverage of almost every topic other than politics and economics shrank. On the domestic side, that translated into diminished coverage of crime, health and medicine, disasters, and immigration as well as softer subjects such as celebrities and lifestyle. Overseas, attention to Iraq, the leading newsmaker in 2007, fell by about three-quarters. Coverage of other hot spots crucial to U.S. interests, most notably Iran and Pakistan, dropped as well—about 75% in the case of Iran and 40% with Pakistan.

A year ago in this report, the first in which we had such a comprehensive content study of the news media—some 70,000 stories—we were struck by the narrowness of the media agenda. More outlets seemed to have resulted not in coverage of more things, but more coverage of a few things. That pattern seemed to intensify in 2008. For much of the year, every story other than the election and the economic crisis was essentially a distraction.

We cannot know for certain how much of that reflected the unusual nature of news in 2008, with a historic presidential election and a profound economic crisis. But while those extraordinary events help explain the lopsided coverage, there is considerable evidence to suggest that the narrowness of the media lens is a more systemic issue, a function of some of the realities—including economic ones—in today’s news industry.

These are some of the findings of A Year in the News, a detailed examination of the content of 48 news outlets over the 12 months. Those 70,000 stories include 2,200 hours of network and cable television, 7,350 front-page newspaper stories, 600 hours of radio, and 6,500 online stories.

The degree to which the American news media seized on a campaign that generated intense public interest is almost hard to conceive. The election had already become the No. 2 media story as far back as February 2007, and was the second-biggest story for that year—making the early level of coverage unprecedented by any calculation.

But in 2008, as voters finally participated in primaries and caucuses, the campaign morphed into something altogether different. It will be instructive to monitor whether we will see a single story of that magnitude again in the foreseeable future.

The election was the top story in every media platform studied, but it in some cases it was thoroughly overwhelming. In only one media platform -- newspaper front pages -- did the story account for less than a quarter of the coverage, at 23%. In network television news, the race for the White House constituted almost one-third of all the news coverage, and on radio, it was more than two-fifths.

But no sector came close to equaling the cable television news networks’ relentless attention to the story. In a year in which ratings for all three major cable news outlets—Fox News, CNN and MSNBC—jumped substantially, much of that can be attributed to the 59% of their airtime that was devoted to the presidential election. And that number rises further—to 65% of the newshole—in prime time.

Those statistics raise a question: to what extent was cable covering the election versus exploiting it. The answer is probably subjective, but the measure might be how much of the time was used to offer new information as opposed to rehashing the same material because it was good for ratings.

With such a one-note news agenda, it follows that cable news channels devoted less coverage to the economy and the war in Iraq than any of the other four major media platforms.¹

In 2008, as the U.S. economy collapsed and raised fears of a depression, it proved to be a difficult story for the press to get a handle on, a complex saga that unfolded in fits and starts and was often difficult to detect and measure in real time. That dynamic changed in the last quarter of the year, when Wall Street firms collapsed, banks failed, unemployment ballooned and officials in Washington tried to stop the bleeding with a massive financial transfusion. At that point, the dimensions of the crisis had become clear in the media narrative. (See PEJ Study on Economic coverage in the news)

For all of last year, the financial story, which included everything from energy costs and the troubled auto industry to the Wall Street bailout, accounted for 15% of the over all newshole. To provide some context, that is almost as much coverage as the Iraq war generated in 2007 (16%) and is about six times more coverage than the economy generated in 2007.

But much of that came in the last three months of the year. Although serious problems in the U.S. economy, particularly in the housing market, began to emerge in the second half of 2007, the news media were sporadic in their attention and late to connect the dots. After an initial spike in coverage in August 2007, for instance (to 5% of the newshole up from 1% in July), when the housing crisis became evident, coverage dropped again by about half over the next few months. Even in November and December 2007, when rising energy costs became a significant issue, coverage remained no more than 5% of the over all newshole.

Then, in 2008, coverage bumped up and down, and it can be broken into several distinct phases that varied in both subject matter and intensity. In the first quarter of the year, the economic news grew on fears of recession, filling 9% of the newshole and emerging as the second-biggest story behind the election.²

It remained at that level (8%) in through June, but the focus shifted again, from recession fears toward an easier subject with plenty of media-friendly visuals. In the second quarter rising energy prices and “pain at the pump” accounted for nearly half—47%—of all economic news. The looming banking crisis, fueled by the collapsing housing market, was far less visible. In August, the month before the crisis emerged fully blown, only 5% of the newshole focused on the economy, down from 11% in June.

Then on Sept. 15, the prestigious investment firm Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and within days, members of Congress and the Bush administration were frantically trying to cobble together what became a $700 billion bailout package. Suddenly, fears of a recession gave way to talk of the most significant financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

For the next four weeks, from September 15 to October 12, the full-blown economic crisis dominated the news, filling more than 40% of all the coverage examined by PEJ, more than the campaign now nearing the finish line (35%).

Then from mid-October until the end of the year, the economy story fell back somewhat, accounting for almost one-quarter of the over all news studied.

In all this, one longstanding pattern in the coverage continued even late in the year. The focus frequently shifted among different aspects of the crisis. In late September and early October, the politics of the Washington bailout bill was the dominant narrative. For the next few weeks, the wild fluctuations and decline of the stock market generated more attention that any other aspect. Then in mid-November, coverage coalesced around the fate of the troubled American auto industry. And by December, some of the focus moved from Wall Street to Main Street as storylines such as unemployment numbers became more prominent.

There is no doubt that the job of covering the trajectory of the economic collapse in 2008 presented some great challenges for journalists. Certainly, many economists and government officials—people better equipped to understand the financial system than the vast majority of journalists—were caught off guard by the magnitude of the crisis and did not ring the warning bells that might have triggered quicker media attention. Logistically, coverage of the financial sector is complicated by the fact that earnings reports and government data lag behind real-time events. That often leaves press accounts out of sync with what is happening on the ground.

But even with those factors taken into consideration, coverage of the run-up to the September meltdown will not go down as one of the media’s finer moments. (The previous most recent challenge to the media might be journalism’s failure to scrutinize carefully enough the claims that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.) By and large, the press as an institution failed to function as an early warning system for what is now being called the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression.

That can be attributed, in part at least, to the media’s overarching preoccupation with the presidential election. Yet other factors strike us as also being in play. Journalists may have failed to have their ears close enough to the ground, relying instead on official pronouncements about the state of the economy than on the economic realities facing the storeowner, the homeowner and the breadwinner. And cutbacks in newsrooms may accentuate all this by reducing the number of specialists who are expert in financial reporting.

Public interest in the economic story—as tracked by a series of surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press—consistently outstripped media attention the story in late 2007 and in the early part of last year. For months, the average citizen seemed more attuned to the rumblings underneath the financial landscape than the journalists.³

Hindsight is 20/20, but economic journalists themselves seem to be aware of their shortcomings last year. According to a January 2009 survey conducted by the media consulting firm of Abrams Research, a solid majority of financial journalists who were polled (68%) were critical of the media’s performance on the economy, feeling that the press failed to recognize the magnitude of the story in the run-up to the crisis.⁴

“Lots of people saw the various pieces of the crisis just fine; it was predicting the way that events unfolded that made everyone, including journalists, look foolish,” one business reporter lamented. ⁵

In a year in which the election and the economy consumed half the over all newshole, which stories lost out in the competition for press attention?

The most glaring example is the Iraq war. In 2008, the Iraq conflict generated about a quarter of the coverage it received the previous year—falling to 4% of the newshole from 16% in 2007. In only one media sector, newspapers, which devoted 6% of their front-page coverage to the conflict, did the Iraq war constitute more than 5% of the over all news coverage studied in 2008.

Several components of the over all Iraq story saw huge decreases in coverage—a reflection, to some extent, of changing conditions both inside Iraq and domestically. With sectarian violence and U.S. casualties down significantly (U.S. military deaths in Iraq dropped to 314 in 2008 from 904 in 2007), coverage of events on the ground in Iraq dropped by two-thirds (to 2% from 6%).

Even larger was the drop-off in press attention to the Washington-based debate over war policy and strategy—to 1% from 8% the previous year. Some of that decrease can be attributed to the fact that the war, both as a subject in the presidential campaign and as a point of conflict between the Congress and White House, diminished significantly as an issue.

In 2007, the battle for control over war funding and withdrawal timetables between President George Bush and the new Democratic-controlled Congress raged for months. In 2008, it was clear that the White House would control Iraq policy until the end of Bush’s term. The war—once expected to be the burning issue in the presidential campaign—receded sharply as the economy supplanted it in polls about public concerns. Indeed, the candidates’ debate over Iraq policy accounted for only 1% of all coverage of the presidential campaign compared with 3% for the economy.

Even these numbers are somewhat misleading because the numbers were much lower for much of the year. A single event, General David Petraeus’ trip to Capitol Hill in April to testify on the war, accounted for 19% of all the Iraq policy coverage in 2008. That eagerly awaited appearance before a largely skeptical Congress was certainly newsworthy. But the amount of coverage it generated—combined with the significant drop in coverage of the situation inside Iraq—is an illustration of how much easier it is for the media to jump on a Washington-based wartime topic than to convey the facts and factions on the ground in a conflict thousands of miles away. By year’s end, the three television broadcast networks with news programs had closed their expensive bureaus in Baghdad.

There are a number of reasons—both related to the war itself and the realities of the news business—that help explain the reduction in coverage in 2008. But do they justify the sharp drop in attention to a war zone that is still the subject of angry domestic divisions within the U.S. and where 150,000 U.S. troops were still in harm’s way at the end of the year? Just as the pack journalism impulse sometimes serves to over-inflate coverage of certain events, there seemed to be an almost collective media retreat from Iraq in 2008. The most important question raised by that is whether the press understated the newsworthiness of the story.

While the death toll may have dropped, there was still plenty of important news from Iraq in 2008—everything from a dramatic visit to Baghdad by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the passage of a security agreement that sets a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal. There were also continued outbreaks of major violence—Turkish troops crossing the Iraq border to battle Kurds in February, a March showdown between Iraqi forces and Shiite militias, and a May bombing that killed dozens at an Iraqi wedding—that made it clear the fighting is far from over and that the country is far from stable.

That’s why many observers were shocked at the drop in coverage in 2008. “Staggering,” said the American Journalism Review in a story simply headlined “Whatever Happened to Iraq?” The article said, “For long stretches over the past 12 months, Iraq virtually disappeared from the front pages of the nation's newspapers and from the nightly network newscasts.”

The drop in coverage may also have had an impact on people’s knowledge of the war. As an example, in March 2008, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only about a quarter of Americans knew approximately how many troops had died in the conflict. Six months earlier, more than half the respondents had gotten the casualty count right.⁶

Iraq was not the only important global story to be crowded out of the American news in 2008.

Coverage of international affairs generally, whether it involved the U.S. or not, fell by more than 40%, to 17% of the newshole studied in 2008, compared with 29% in 2007.

Combined coverage of Pakistan and Iran—two countries that present major strategic challenges to the U.S.—fell by almost two-thirds (dropping to 2% of the newshole studied in 2008).

Coverage of the other war in which U.S. troops were fighting—Afghanistan—remained at the same low level (1%) in 2008 as 2007, but it had already almost disappeared. That despite a 2008 American death toll that was the highest in the six-year history of that conflict and continuing signs that the fighting may escalate.

One of the few major international newsmakers last year was a two-week-long sporting event. Coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games, the fifth-biggest foreign story of the year, exceeded that of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and China.⁷

The Games were covered most heavily by network news broadcasts, thanks mostly to NBC, the U.S. broadcast rights holder. For the month of August, while the Olympics were filling 9% of the over all media newshole, NBC news was devoting 31% of its airtime to covering the Games and its related MSNBC.com website allotted 21% of its newshole to that subject. (The MSNBC cable channel, perhaps pre-occupied with the campaign, devoted only 1% of its August coverage to the Games).

The Olympics got virtually as much attention as the Georgia-Russia war in August, even though that event generated the most single-week coverage (26%) of any story not related to politics or the economy. While much of the Olympic coverage focused on the exploits of eight-time gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps, the U.S. media largely ignored some of the more substantive international angles.

Looking at coverage for August, which includes the run-up and postscript to the Games, American hero Phelps was the overwhelming focus of coverage, as a lead newsmaker in 14% of all Olympic stories. (The host country itself, China, was the focus of 2% of the stories.) When it came to the topics covered in news accounts, three subjects—the future of China and the Games’ impact on that, Olympic-related protests and press freedom in China —combined to account for 6% of the Olympic newshole. That’s about half the coverage devoted to the opening ceremonies alone.

What is chiefly responsible for the narrow news agenda—the news or the news industry?

The 2008 presidential election was an historic event. And given an economy widely characterized as the weakest since Great Depression, the 2008 financial meltdown may prove to be a once-in-a lifetime event. Thus it was not surprising that those two stories dominated the news. But it is important to ask to what extent the fact that two stories filled half of the news agenda reflects the news or the changing realities and shrinking resources of newsrooms.

Some evidence suggests the news—rather than the media culture—explain part of these numbers. Once the election was over, the news agenda for the remaining two months of the year became more diffuse. For example, in the weeks between November 4 and December 21, at least three and sometimes four stories each week accounted for at least 10% of the newshole. That had not happened previously since August 18.

But it is also true that some of the stories that helped fill the newshole late in the year—such as the troubled auto industry, the new Obama administration and the Rod Blagojevich scandal—were related to or offshoots of the economic crisis and the presidential election.

There are other factors that suggest the top-heavy news agenda in 2008 is a reflection of how the media now tend to function. For one thing, this shrinking news agenda did not suddenly emerge in 2008. In 2007, the basic dynamic was the same. No, the election and the Iraq war did not dominate as overwhelmingly as the election and economy did in 2008. But we now have a two-year track record, since PEJ began its News Coverage Index, of a press culture more oriented to talk shows and with depleted reporting ranks clearly focusing much of its time and energy on fewer stories.

There may also have been some basic bottom-line reasons why some media, particularly cable news, narrowed their news agenda. In a crowded media landscape, cable news attached itself to the election and enjoyed significant, if temporary, ratings success and filled a big chunk of its 24/7 newshole with inexpensive programming in the form of pundit commentary. (See Cable Audience for more info)

Another contributing factor is the retrenchment on foreign coverage. In a time of economic hardship, many news outlets have shuttered expensive foreign bureaus, making ongoing consistent coverage of international stories much more difficult. (January saw the launch of GlobalPost, a Boston-based Web outlet dedicated to becoming a kind of clearinghouse for international news, at a time its founders say “original international reporting… has been steadily diminished in too many American newspapers and television networks.”) In the foreseeable future, there seems to be little prospect for a reversal of the trend away from global news coverage in the mainstream press.

That raises an interesting question. If another war on the scale and significance of Iraq broke out in this economic environment, would the U.S. media cover it as intensely as it did the last war, which began in 2003? That could get put to the test if the fighting and the American presence escalate significantly in Afghanistan.

Another factor that skews the news agenda is the tendency of the ideological debate-oriented venues—such as talk radio and prime-time cable news—to select and amplify one or two big stories from the news menu. What we have found in the two years of this study is that these ideological outlets often ignore news that does not lend itself to punditry and polarization. In their place, these programs tend to revisit the same themes day after day.

And for the second year in a row, PEJ’s examination of the news agenda revealed the phenomenon of the one-week wonder. Even when a major story managed to break through the clutter of the election and economic coverage in 2008, the press quickly seemed to tire of it.

A sudden outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Georgia was the top story for a week in August when it filled 26% of the newshole and became the biggest story in 2008 not to involve politics or the economy. The following week, coverage of the conflict was down by more than two-thirds. The sexual indiscretions that brought down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer filled about a quarter of the newshole (23%) in mid-March. A week later, it had virtually vanished, to only 2% of the newshole. The drain on reporting resources may be one major reason for the lack of staying power on stories that require aggressive and sustained follow-up reporting.

The shrinking newsroom resources, identified in every sector of the media in 2008, would seem to encourage this narrowing. (See Key Indicators for more info) Fewer people in newsrooms, as we have noted in this study in past years, inevitably pulls news organizations to focus intensively on one or two subjects at a time, and then move on. They simply no longer have the resources in reporting power to push a wider agenda.

This evidence does not all tilt in the same direction, but over all it would seem to suggest some theories behind the very constricted coverage in 2008. The magnitude of the election and an economic collapse likely shrank the rest of the newshole more drastically than normal. But it is also clear that some of the institutional problems and tendencies of the media—shrinking resources, scaled-back ambition, a media echo chamber in cable and radio talk—played a role in the narrowness of the media landscape last year.

There is little doubt that the public was riveted by the 2008 presidential campaign. In a year-end summary of news interest, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, concluded that “interest in election news remained at historically high levels throughout the lengthy campaign” and that “public interest in the primary campaigns… was higher than during previous primary contests.”

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Even in a year when their future was cast further in doubt, newspapers continued to offer coverage that distinguished them in the media ecosystem.

Over the course of 2008, newspapers provided news consumers with a wider range of coverage than was available on most other platforms – even on just their front pages.

In the media over all, for instance, fully half of the newshole in 2008 was devoted to combined coverage of just two stories – the election and an economic slowdown that became a meltdown. Those stories filled 42% of the front-page newspaper coverage, leaving more room for attention to other subjects. ¹

In turn, print front pages devoted more attention to subjects such as immigration, health care, U.S. anti-terrorism efforts and the war in Iraq than any other sector.

And within the newspaper universe itself, there were some notable differences in the news agenda. In some important ways, the smallest papers – those with circulations under 100,000 – offered a different portrait of events in 2008 than found anywhere else. Unlike their larger counterparts, the No. 1 story in the smaller dailies by a significant margin was the economic downturn rather than the election. And the main story of the war in Iraq was about how it was affecting the home front, even more than events unfolding inside Iraq. These findings suggest that the more community-oriented dailies were well positioned to report on national or even international issues by covering the local angle to a bigger story.

Top 10 Stories: Newspaper vs. Media Over All
Percent of Newshole

Newspaper		Media over all
Election*	23%	Election*	36%
U.S. Economy^†	19	U.S. Economy^†	15
Iraq War^‡	6	Iraq War^‡	4
Domestic Terrorism	2	Domestic Terrorism	1
Immigration	2	Olympics	1
Olympics	2	Blagojevich Scandal	1
Health Care	1	Afghanistan	1
Pakistan	1	Pakistan	1
Afghanistan	1	Immigration	1
Georgia/Russia Conflict	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1

* Includes stories about the campaign, results, and the transition
† Includes stories about the financial crisis, economic issues, gas/oil prices, auto industry, and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae
‡ Includes stories about Iraq policy debate, events in Iraq, and the impact of the war in the U.S.

The Most Coverage of the Economy

In 2008, the newspaper sector devoted 19% of its front-page space to coverage of the deepening financial crisis. That was more than any other media sector and about one-third more than in the media over all (15%). This is part of a trend that began in 2007, when evidence of the economic crisis began to manifest itself and newspapers were quickest to jump on the story, with particular attention to the problems in the faltering housing market.

In 2008, as the narrative of the unfolding economic story shifted several times, newspapers continued to pay the most attention to the story. In every month in 2008, newspaper front pages devoted more coverage to the economy than cable news, network, radio or the online sector. The one exception was a stretch from May through July 2008, when network news focused on rising gas prices and pain at the pump – a story that in the end missed the coming banking and financial collapse.

Economy Coverage Over Time: Newspaper vs. Over All

2007 through 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Not only did newspapers cover the economic meltdown more heavily on their front pages than other media did over all, but they also covered it differently. In print, the story of the economy was much more closely tied to housing and mortgages that it was in the media generally. And politics of the bailout plan, very much a Washington-centric narrative, was not a dominant story.²

In print, about 18% of the economic coverage was tied to the housing crisis and troubles afflicting federal mortgage funders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, compared with about 13% generally. Roughly another 11% of the economic story in newspapers was about the discussion of a recession – about 20% higher than the proprotion in the media over all.

In turn, newspapers devoted about 40% less coverage to the politics surrounding the federal bailout plan as the media in general. The ups and downs in the stock market accounted for only 2% of the newspapers' economic coverage compared with 4% in the media over all. And newspapers offered about 20% less coverage of the troubled U.S. auto industry – and efforts to bail it out – than the media in general.

Given a deepening and multifaceted economic crisis that proved difficult for the media to track in real time, newspapers amassed a track record for this, the most extensive coverage of the second-biggest story of 2008. There may be several reasons for this. With the exception of a handful of national papers, they tend to be local insitutions first and foremost. And as we found especially to be the case of the smaller dailies, that gave them an opportunity to use their own communities as a way of telling the bigger story. At the same time, many newspapers have traditionally maintained a seperate business section as well as the roster of experienced business writers and reporters to deploy on a story like this.

Newspapers and the Presidential Election – Less Coverage, More Tone

When it came to the election, three things stood out in the coverage of American newspapers. The election dominated agenda in the print less than elsewhere. The coverage focused somewhat less explicitly on the horse race and more on personal biography. And while it may not have been so much about the polls, it nonetheless appeared to reflect their influence, for the coverage, often interpretative, was even tougher on McCain and more favorable to Obama than in the media generally.

Over all, even though the 2008 election ranked as the No. 1 story on newspaper front pages, less than a quarter of the coverage that began on the front pages (23%) was devoted to the election of 2008, compared with 36% in the media generally

And in a year in which horse race coverage of tactics, strategy and polling accounted for a majority of the coverage over all (57%) from January 6 to November 3, newspapers produced modestly less of this (54%). But that slack was not taken up by coverage of where the candidates wanted to take the country in policy terms. Newspapers devoted a lower percentage of their campaign coverage to policy (11%) than any other media sector. What newspapers did to leverage their advantages in reporting time and resources, instead, was to produce the most front-page coverage of personal issues.

Frame of Campaign Coverage: Newspaper vs. Media Over All

Jan. 6-Nov. 3, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008
*Includes stories about advertisements, electoral calendar, endorsements, and treatment by the press

That coverage took the form of a number of lengthy profiles later in the race. From mid-September through Election Day, larger papers offered no less than a dozen such front-page profiles. Ranging in length from about 1,800 words to over 5,000 words, four were on the Democratic ticket – one on Joseph Biden and three on Barack Obama. Eight were on the GOP candidates – three on Sarah Palin and five on John McCain. A number of the pieces on McCain focused on his time in Vietnam, where he was a prisoner of war.

There seemed to be some general patterns to these profiles. The Palin pieces, which examined her record as an elected official in Alaska, often talked about her as a polarizing figure. The Obama pieces emphasized evolution or transformation. And the McCain stories were framed by his wartime experiences in Vietnam.

On September 14, the Washington Post ran a 2,299-word story on Palin with the headline “As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood.” On the same day, the New York Times ran a 3,221-word story headlined “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes.”

Also on September 14, the San Francisco Chronicle profiled Barack Obama in a 3,236-word article entitled “Transformations: A lifetime of evolving and adapting his identity has helped propel Barack Obama near the pinnacle of U.S. politics.” A subsequent Washington Post 3,989-word profile of Obama appeared on October 9 with the headline “From Outsider to Politician.”

In October, within the space of about a week, three lengthy pieces on John McCain were published, two of them in the Washington Post: “In Ordeal as Captive, Character Was Shaped” and “Seeing White House From a Cell in Hanoi.” The New York Times carried a 2,667-word piece entitled “Writing Memoir, McCain Found a Narrative for Life.”

Newspapers also stood out, at least during the homestretch of the general election phase (from September 8 to November 2) by being even more critical about McCain’s campaign, and more favorable about Obama’s, than the media over all. Fully half of the Obama newspaper stories were positive during this period, compared with 38% in the media generally, while 23% were negative (compared with 27% over all). That represents the highest percentage of positive Obama stories of any of the five media sectors studied.

Conversely, the tone of newspaper coverage of McCain was tougher than the already negative portrayal in the media over all. In newspapers, only 5% of McCain’s stories were positive (compared with 14% in the media over all) and 65% were negative (compared with 57% in the media over all.) That represented the lowest percentage of positive McCain stories of any media sector examined.

What would explain front-page newspaper coverage that magnified the over all media narrative about the two candidates? Perhaps format and deadlines played a role. Because newspapers are reporting on what happened yesterday and have the luxury of more space and time than the instantaneous media, their coverage of the candidates tended to be more analytical. While cable news may stage debates, often those are people disagreeing. Newspapers are more prone to come to some bottom-line conclusion. That may well have translated into more coverage focused on explaining and analyzing the prevalent strategic dynamic, which was a story of Obama running a more effective campaign than McCain.

Tone of Coverage: Obama vs. McCain
Percent of Campaign Stories, September 8-November 2, 2008

	Newspaper		Media over all
	Obama	McCain	Obama	McCain
Positive	50%	5%	38%	14%
Negative	23	65	27	57
Neutral	27	30	34	29

Newspapers Lead in Coverage of Iraq War, Immigration, Health Care and Terrorism

Like all other media sectors, newspapers found themselves with a narrower news agenda in a year dominated by the election and economy. But even so, the front pages remained more varied than much of the media menu. In practice, that does not mean that newspapers maintained their 2007 level of coverage for some of these stories, but rather that they decreased their attention to a lesser degree than other media platforms.

Given the range of news, the numbers often are small, but they add up across topics to a substantially more breadth. Among the items that got more coverage in print than elsewhere: the Iraq war, immigration, health care and U.S. efforts to combat terrorism.

Even as coverage of the war in Iraq plunged by about two-thirds in newspapers from 2007 to 2008, for instance, the front pages still devoted substantially more coverage to Iraq than the media over all (6% vs. 4% of newshole). While the impact of the war on the U.S. home front was largely absent in the rest of the media, it remained a sizable story in print, thanks largely to the more extensive coverage in the smaller community-oriented dailies.

Immigration, another big story from 2007 that diminished in 2008, remained about twice as big in print as in the media over all. Beyond the usual coverage of immigration policy and legislation, immigration raids and other enforcement-related issues, newspapers also spent time looking at the immigrant communities.

Newspaper Top Broad Topics vs. Media Over All

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

A 2,000-word article in the Los Angeles Times chronicled the path of a 60-year old Hispanic woman hoping that working for Mary Kay cosmetics would help to propel her into the middle class. The Wall Street Journal described how an influx of refugees from Myanmar, the former Burma, had helped the Swift meatpacking plant in Cactus, Texas, get up and running again after a federal raid in 2006 arrested 297 illegal aliens working there. And the Colorado Springs Gazette looked at how tougher immigration laws and the deepening financial crisis in the U.S. have resulted in a reverse migration back to Mexico for many immigrants.

Another subject that newspapers paid more attention to attracted little notice elsewhere in the media. Over all, health care accounted for 1% of the newspaper newshole – more than double the coverage in the media over all – and registered as a top-10 newspaper story, just behind coverage of the Olympics and ahead of coverage of Pakistan.

And driven by coverage in the larger dailies with the most resources, newspapers also offered the most coverage of issues related to U.S. efforts to combat terrorism – almost 50% more attention than the media in general. One key component of that coverage was the controversial prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Smaller Papers and Big Stories

The Financial Downturn Hits Home

An examination of newspaper coverage of several major stories reveals a significant distinction based on the size of the publication. In several cases, the smallest papers – those with a circulation less than 100,000 – devoted the most coverage to a major story, the economy, in large part by mining the local community.

The biggest papers (650,000 circulation and up) and major metros (100,000 to 650,000) devoted a nearly identical percentage of their front-page newshole (18% and 19%, respectively) to the economic crisis in 2008, their second-biggest story for the year.

But in mid-sized and small newspapers (under 100,000), the economy was the biggest story of 2008, ahead of the election. For the year, fully a quarter of the coverage that began on the front page (26%) was about the economy and much of it dealt in real terms with the impact of the nation’s financial crisis on the day-to-day struggles of families and local businesses.

Top 10 Stories by Newspaper Circulation
Percent of newshole

	650,000 and up		100,000-650,000		Less than 100,000
1	Election*	22%	Election*	28%	U.S. Economy^†	26%
2	U.S. Economy^†	18	U.S. Economy^†	19	Election*	20
3	Iraq War^‡	5	Iraq War^‡	6	Iraq War^‡	8
4	Domestic Terrorism	2	Global Warming	2	Olympics	3
5	Pakistan	2	Health Care	2	Health Care	2
6	Immigration	2	Domestic Terrorism	2	Holiday Season	2
7	Afghanistan	1	Olympics	1	Immigration	2
8	Olympics	1	Immigration	1	Gloabal Warming	1
9	Health Care	1	Afghanistan	1	Domestic Terrorism	1
10	China	1	Energery Debate	1	Energy Debate	1

As the year began, much of this echoed the discussion in the national media of recession fears, falling home sales and rising foreclosures. In hometown papers it was illustrated by local examples. In the second quarter, the stories became even more specific – a local golf course up for sale, more people shopping at thrift stores, local layoffs and residents using bicycles to avoid paying high gas prices. In the third quarter, coverage was sparer, and tracked the national bank failures. The only unusual local angle was coverage of rising home foreclosures. But in the final months of the year, as the national media focused on the financial industry bailout in Washington, the coverage on local front pages showed a sharp increase in more finely grained stories about how local people, communities and states were attempting to cope. The crisis was hitting Main Street, not just Wall Street.

The Colorado Springs Gazette, for example, carried articles about what local residents were doing to get by in hard times and how utility bills were expected to rise by 23%. The MetroWest Daily News outside Boston wrote about homes – vacant because of foreclosures – that were flooded by burst pipes. The New Hampshire Union Leader reported on local layoffs. And the Modesto Bee in California produced stories on divorced couples who were forced to remain in the same house.

As these papers proved, it can be easier to track and illustrate an economic downturn of massive dimensions by chronicling the fallout closest to home.

The Iraq Home Front

The impact of the Iraq war was also different in smaller newspapers than in the national media. While the home front was a small story nationally even in print (1% of the coverage in the biggest papers, 2% in big metros), the effect of the war at home was the major component of the Iraq story in the country’s smaller-circulation papers (fully 5% of all coverage).

These were stories that included homecomings, funerals, celebrations and remembrances (about a third of the coverage), about the impact of the war on families and communities (another third) and on conditions for wounded veterans – recovery from injuries, the Wounded Warrior program, as well as those struggling with mental health issues, homelessness, financial problems or substance abuse issues (about one out of six stories).

The Chattanooga Times Free Press recounted the emotions of the friends and family of a young Marine killed in Anbar Province as they waited for his body to arrive home. The Bakersfield Californian recalled the life and death of a local 21-year-old killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his Humvee in 2006. In September and October, the New Hampshire Union Leader carried a five-part series on a member of the local National Guard critically wounded in Iraq, and his fight to recover.

In many ways, smaller papers with a more intimate sense of their community were best positioned to examine the many different human costs of the war. The Colorado Springs Gazette, for example, reported on a Fort Carson soldier working as a teacher’s aide with kindergarten and first-grade students who found the job helping him with cognitive problems caused by an explosion. “I had trouble keeping up with adult conversations,” he told the paper, “but I could keep up with the kids.”

Local Olympic Heroes

One other story was clearly bigger in the small newspapers in 2008: the Olympics, where the coverage was about double what it was in larger papers.

More than half the stories highlighted hometown links to the Games – local athletes either competing in qualifying events or actually heading to Beijing, a local reporter going to China to cover the games, a local chiropractor selected to join the health care team, as well as reactions of local residents to media coverage or to stories of inspiring athletes.

The MetroWest Daily News in Massachusetts profiled Natick sports chiropractor Scott Gillman, selected by the World Olympians Association to join the health care team in Beijing, as well as staff reporter Chris Bergeron, who – having previously lived and worked in China for seven years – was returning to a vastly transformed country.

The Colorado Spring Gazette’s stories, focusing on individual athletes, were, for the most part, more poignant. There was the story of Mike Farrell, a Colorado Springs resident who suffered nerve damage after being bitten by the family dog when he was only three days old, competing in the U.S. Paralympics cycling trials. (The Paralympics were held in Beijing a few weeks after the Olympic Games) And the tale of another local resident, Roger Stewart, the first known deaf wrestler to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials. Colorado Springs is the headquarters of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Footnotes

1. Only the online sector devoted less of its newshole (39%) to the year’s two top stories.

2. According to the weekly News Interest Index, which measures which stories are being followed “very closely” by the public, eight of the top 15 stories related to the economy. http://people-press.org/report/479/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-outlet

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

If the news agenda of legacy media is shrinking, the evidence suggests a broader and certainly more international flavor online.

In 2008, a year dominated by the presidential election and the economic meltdown, and when coverage of the Iraq war plummeted, the leading news websites provided the most coverage of events outside the U.S. borders. And some domestic issues beyond the economy and the election were also more prevalent online.

The presidential election and the economy certainly dominated. But they did so to a lesser degree online than in the media over all. And as a result, much as we found a year earlier, the five leading news websites also offered more coverage of foreign news among their top stories and other matters as well.

Online, time of day also matters. Users who went to a site early in the day were more likely to see foreign news coverage than those who went to the same site late in the day.

The focus of each site’s leading news coverage varied. The Web aggregator sites differed significantly from each other, and varied even more from those tied to legacy news operations. Yahoo News, for instance, was much more focused on the three major storylines of the year. Google News, by contrast, offered the largest amount of foreign news coverage.

But they also shared certain characteristics that distinguished them from other media, too.

These are all among the findings of a yearlong examination of the five most popular news sites, some 6,539 stories, over 262 days. The sites examined were AOL News, CNN.com, Google News, MSNBC.com and Yahoo News.

Online as a Source for International News

The top online news sites got somewhat less international in 2008 than they were the year before.

In 2008, 18% of the news coverage on leading online news sites was about non-U.S. international stories, down from the 25% in 2007.

And another 9% was about U.S. foreign affairs, down from 22% in 2007.

International Coverage: Online vs. Media Over All

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

But this was still significantly higher than any other media sector in 2008. In the media generally, 10% of news coverage was about international affairs not involving the U.S. and another 6% was about U.S. foreign affairs.

Over all, seven of the top-10 stories of the year on the websites studied were international events. In the overall media five were.

One of the major reasons for the decrease in U.S.-related international coverage online was a decrease in attention paid to Iraq. In 2007, Iraq made up 17% of the online news coverage and was by far the biggest story of the year. In 2008, Iraq made up only 4% of online news coverage.

Top Stories Online vs. Media Over all
Percent of Newshole

	Online		Media Over All
1	Election*	25%	Election*	36%
2	U.S. Economy^†	14	U.S. Economy^†	15
3	Iraq War^‡	4	Iraq War^‡	4
4	Pakistan	2	Domestic Terrorism	1
5	Olympics	2	Olympics	1
6	Domestic Terrorism	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
7	Afghanistan	1	Afghanistan	1
8	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1	Pakistan	1
9	Israeli/Palestinian Conflict	1	Immigration	1
10	Zimbabwe Elections	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008
* Includes stories about the campaign, results, and the transition
† Includes stories about the financial crisis, economic issues, gas/oil prices, auto industry, and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae
‡ Includes stories about Iraq policy debate, events in Iraq, and the impact of the war in the U.S.

Online, Iraq was replaced as a major story by events in a host of other hotspots. Pakistan, for instance, was the fourth-biggest story of the year on the news websites studied. Other than online, only the newspaper category had Pakistan in its top-10 stories of the year (at No. 8).

Other foreign stories that received more attention online than anywhere else included the Georgia/Russia conflict, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the internal unrest following elections in Zimbabwe and the major earthquake that hit China. (In 2007, Pakistan and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict also received more coverage online than in any other sectors.)

Election as Top Story

As elsewhere, online the No. 1 story was the presidential election. But here it filled only a quarter (25%) of the newshole on the news sites rather than the 36% in the media generally. Only newspaper front pages (23%) were lower.

News websites generally feature one or two stories most prominently on their home pages at a given time, and the election was the biggest focus in those stories through the year as well. Almost a third (29%) of lead stories on the news home pages were about the election. One example occurred on April 30, when Yahoo News led with a picture of Barack Obama giving a speech condemning inflammatory comments made by his former pastor. The story had the headline, “Obama Tries to Dig Out: His candidacy is reeling from Jeremiah Wright’s comments. Now Obama is dropping nuance and showing some fire.” The headline then linked to an analysis by Time magazine reporter Karen Tumulty that Obama had been facing a series of setbacks including the controversy over Wright.

Frame of Campaign Coverage
Percent of Campaign Newshole
January 6-November 3, 2008

	Online	Media Over all
Political Horse Race	63%	57%
Other Political	9	13
Policy	12	13
Personal	5	7
Public Record	4	3
Other	7	6

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

With online’s tendency toward breaking news, its focus of the presidential campaign coverage was even slightly more horse-race-focused than the media over all. From early January until Election Day, 63% of online campaign coverage was on the political horse race, which was more than the 57% in the media over all. (Meanwhile, 12% of the online coverage about the campaign was about the policy elements of the campaign, which was almost the same as the media over all, 13%.)

In part because of their greater tendency to focus on horse race, the leading news websites also tended to offer more coverage favorable to the candidate ahead in the polls than the press generally. During the last eight weeks of the campaign (September 8-November 2), 47% of the stories focused on Obama were positive (up from 38% in the press over all), 30% were neutral (vs. 34%), and 22% were negative (compared with 27%).

In contrast, Republican nominee John McCain received more negative coverage online than in the media generally. Almost two-thirds (64%) of campaign stories on the top websites focused on McCain were negative, which was more than the 57% of campaign stories in the media over all. Only 8% of online campaign stories about McCain were positive compared with 14% over all.

Domestic Subjects

Just under three-quarters of the top story coverage online was about domestic affairs (73%). While that was up substantially from the year before (53%), it was still low by the standards of the year (in the press over all it was 83%).

The primary reason that online still offered less domestic news than the media in general is that the top news websites had less coverage of the election and economy. Together, 39% of the online coverage was devoted to those stories compared to 51% of the media over all. The only sector that was close to online was newspapers (42% devoted to those two subjects).

The answer is in part tied to one of the strengths of online news — the ability for the sites to update stories frequently throughout the day and report breaking information almost instantly.

Top Broad Story Topics: Online vs. Media Over All
Percent of Newshole

Online		Media Over All
Elections/Politics	22%	Elections/Politics	34%
Foreign (Non-U.S.)	18	Foreign (Non-U.S.)	11
Economics	12	Economics	10
U.S. Foreign Affairs	9	U.S. Foreign Affairs	6
Crime	6	Crime	5
Disasters/Accidents	6	Disasters/Accidents	4
Government	4	Government	4
Business	4	Business	4
Health/Medicine	2	Health/Medicine	3
U.S. Miscellaneous	2	U.S. Miscellaneous	2

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

While elections/politics (at 22% of the newshole) was the largest single topic covered online, that number was smaller for websites than for any other media sector except for newspapers (also at 22%).

Economic coverage was the second-largest topic area covered by online news sites at 12%, while business news was an additional 4%. Many of these stories would focus on breaking economic news that would hit the homepages soon after being announced. At approximately 4 p.m. Eastern Time on September 16, for example, the homepage on AOL News led with a breaking story that the Federal Reserve had decided to not cut interest rates despite the previous day’s big drop in the stock market.

But on a litany of other domestic topics, the Internet news sites studied actually offered among the highest amounts of coverage. And a good deal of this may have something to do with the orientation of Web news sites to events that are fast breaking.

Crime reporting, at 6%, for instance, was higher than all of the other media sectors studied except for cable television, also at 6%.

Also at 6%, disasters and accidents were reported online more than any sector except for network television (at 7%). These types of breaking stories, such as the tornadoes that struck on February 5 (Super Tuesday for the presidential primary campaign) were often among the lead stories that websites promoted as breaking news.

Morning vs. Evening Coverage

Web sites are unique among news products in that they can be updated and viewed at any time. A person who visits a Web site in the morning may find very different lead stories from one who visits the same site in the evening. What differences might one find?

Beginning April 28, 2008, and going through the end of the year, PEJ rotated the times that we captured websites each weekday. On one day the websites were captured between 9 and 10 a.m. Eastern Time, and on the next day they were captured between 4 and 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

Having this rotation allows us to discover how different the news agenda might be for users who visit the sites at the beginning and end of a typical workday on the East Coast. The differences, while relatively minor, do suggest that certain late-breaking stories become more prominent later in the day, while foreign coverage is more present early in the day, with much of the world hours ahead of the U.S. news cycle.

Differences in Broad Story Topics by Morning and Evening Online
April 28,2008 - Dec. 31, 2008
Percent of Newshole

	Mornings (9-10 a.m. ET)	Evenings (4-5 p.m. ET)
Elections/Politics	23%	20%
Foreign (Non-U.S.)	20	15
Economics	13	15
U.S. Foreign Affairs	8	8
Crime	5	7
Disasters/Accidents	7	6
Government	5	6
Business	5	4
Health/Medicine	1	3
U.S. Miscellaneous	2	2

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

The biggest difference between morning and early evening is that there is significantly more international news early in the day. A fifth (20%) of the top news coverage online in the morning on the East Coast is non-U.S. international stories compared to 15% later in the day. This may be due in large part to the differences in time zones since many overseas visitors to those sites are more likely to view the sites during early morning in the United States.

Differences Between Sites

The mix of online outlets studied is more diverse in structure and news process than any other genre studied. The online sample for PEJ’s leading news sites consists of two types of sites: aggregators (Google News, Yahoo News and AOL News) and sites that are tied to other news organizations (MSNBC.com and CNN.com). (Starting in 2009, given a growing shift in audience to online news, the PEJ sample will include 12 websites rather than these 5). PEJ discovered that in 2007, despite the similarities in the way a site chooses its leading news stories, the subject matter between similar types of sites can differ significantly. This same pattern also held true in 2008.

Top Stories of Online Aggregators
Percent of Newshole

AOL News		Google News		Yahoo News
Election*	20%	Election*	26%	Election*	24%
U.S. Economy^†	8	U.S. Economy^†	7	U.S. Economy^†	20
Iraq War^‡	3	Iraq War^‡	4	Iraq War^‡	6
Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	2	Zimbabwe Elections	3	Pakistan	3
Domestic Terrorism	1	Pakistan	3	Afghanistan	2
China Earthquake	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	2	Israeli/Palestinian Conflict	2
Hurricane Ike	1	Kenya Elections and Violence	2	China Earthquake	2
Afghanistan	1	China	2	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1
Israeli/Palestinian Conflict	1	Iran	2	Olympics	1
Olympics	1	Domestic Terrorism	2	Domestic Terrorism	1

PEJ’s content analysis includes the three most popular aggregation sites—Yahoo News, AOL News and Google News. Of the three, Yahoo News, which uses human editors to select its stories, was much more focused on a few major stories throughout the year. AOL News, which also uses people to make the story selections, was the most focused on a wide range of domestic news. Google News, which employs computer algorithms to decide with stories are most prevalent, was the most international.

At Yahoo News, over half of the top story coverage (51%) was about the three major storylines of the year—the presidential election, the economy and Iraq, compared with 37% for Google News and 32% for AOL News.

At AOL News, domestic news filled 79% of the space among the top stories during the year (compared with 66% at Yahoo News and 61% at Google News). But the election was filled the least of this top newshole, just 20%, less than both Google News (26%) and Yahoo News (24%).

At Google News, the rest of the world was a bigger story (non-U.S. coverage filled 28% of the newshole studied). Eight of the top 10 stories of the year for Google News were international events.

Select Broad Topic Coverage by Online Aggregators

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Who Produces the News on Aggregator Sites

Because AOL, Yahoo, and Google produce little to no original content on their news sites, they all rely heavily on wire stories such as those from the Associated Press or Reuters.

For Yahoo, 86% of its coverage was from wire services, compared to 90% for AOL. Google linked to many wire stories, but 79% of its leading news coverage was from news organizations other than wire services compared to 21% that was from wires. These other news sources encompassed a wide range of outlets from the New York Times to CNN to international-focused sites like the BBC and the Voice of America.

Story Format of Online Aggregators
Percent of Newshole

	AOL News	Yahoo News	Google News
Wire	90%	86%	21%
Other news outlet	8	12	79
Internal Staff	2	2	0
Combo wire/staff	<1	0	0
Outside contributor/freelance	<1	0	0

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

These numbers are similar to what we found last year with one exception, at Yahoo. ¹ In 2007, almost all of Yahoo’s leading news coverage (98%) came from wire stories. That number fell in 2008 to 86%. Much of this change came from more copy being featured from two sources, Politico and Time magazine, such as a March 26 Time interview with Hillary Clinton, in which she described her plan to win the Democratic nomination for president despite trailing Obama in delegates by a slight margin at the time.

Site Differences — Sites Tied to Legacy Media

Two of the sites in the yearlong study, CNN.com and MSNBC.com, were tied to the legacy media of cable news channels.

While the television channels associated with these sites differ more markedly according to our content studies, (see Cable TV Content Analysis for more) the two websites are quite similar in news judgment.

Each site gave roughly the same amount of coverage to the top three stories of the year. (CNN.com gave 28% to the presidential election, for instance, and MSNBC.com gave 26%.)

Top Stories for Online Sites Tied to Legacy Media
Percent of Newshole

MSNBC.com		CNN.com
Election*	26%	Election*	28%
U.S. Economy^†	16	U.S. Economy^†	17
Iraq War^‡	5	Iraq War^‡	4
Olympics	2	Olympics	1
Pakistan	2	Afghanistan	1
Domestic Terrorism	2	Mumbai Terror Attacks	1
Afghanistan	1	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	1
Blagojevich Scandal	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
Myanmar Cyclone	1	Pakistan	1
Georgia/Russia Conflict	1	Domestic Terrorism	1

Both CNN.com and MSNBC.com also split similarly between foreign and domestic topics. CNN.com devoted 21% of its newshole to foreign topics compared with 23% for MSNBC.com).

And how did the two websites compare to their cable channel siblings on television?
To begin with, neither website was as election-heavy or domestically focused as their cable channel counterparts.

Story Selection: MSNBC Online vs. MSNBC Cable

2008 Coverage of Big News Events

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008
Election includes stories about the campaign, results, and the transition.
U.S. Economy includes stories about the financial crisis, economic issues, gas/oil prices, auto industry, and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae.
Iraq War includes stories about Iraq policy debate, events in Iraq, and the impact of the war in the U.S.

Story Selection: CNN Online vs. CNN Cable

2008 Coverage of Big News Events

Design Your Own Chart

The election was the largest story of the year for CNN.com (28%) and MSNBC.com (26%), but those paled in comparison to the level of coverage on CNN’s cable channel (55%) and MSNBC’s cable channel (72%).

On the other hand, both websites devoted significantly more time to the other top stories of the year – the economy and Iraq. MSNBC.com devoted 16% of its leading news coverage to the troubles with the U.S. economy and 5% to Iraq, while the cable television station devoted 7% to the economy and 1% to Iraq. CNN.com devoted 17% to the economy compared to 12% on the cable channel and 4% to Iraq compared to 1%.

CNN.com and MSNBC.com offered more overseas news than their cable television siblings. More than three-quarters (79%) of the leading news coverage on CNN.com was focused on domestic topics, compared to 91% on CNN’s cable channel. On MSNBC.com, that number was 77%, but still less than the 96% of domestic coverage on MSNBC’s cable channel.

Beyond that, CNN.com and CNN both emphasize breaking news. 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. Most of these headlines come from CNN’s own reporting. The homepage features a list, updated every 20 minutes, of the most popular articles on the site. 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 “World,” “Entertainment” and “Science”). The site also has links to blogs and podcasts produced by some of CNN’s television personalities, but those are not as prominently placed.

Another area that CNN experimented with a great deal in 2008 was its iReport section. While this section was not included in PEJ’s study of the main news stories on the site, iReport is a way that users could upload their own videos and share their stories and first-hand experiences with other users.

MSNBC.com, on the other hand, has built its own identity, while also trying to be the home for both NBC and MSNBC on television. The site offers a combination of breaking news along with longer pieces from Newsweek and prominent links to the various NBC and MSNBC television-related websites. Multimedia features are prevalent on the site, as they are on CNN.com, 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 only on one or two developing stories. 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. MSNBC.com does have a way that users can send in pictures to the site, such as photos of their favorite locations to NBC’s Today Show, but it is not as prominent or unfiltered as CNN’s iReport section.

Content Analysis

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

In a year dominated by the presidential campaign and the U.S. economy, how did the major broadcast networks cover the news? Did trends and patterns that were evident in 2007 continue last year? And how does network news distinguish itself from the rest of the media landscape?

The short answer is that evening news on the three main broadcast networks tended to cover the election differently than morning news—oriented less around the horse race—but also tended to focus a good deal of its economic coverage on issues that were easy to present graphically and convenient but less than central to the eventual meltdown.

In 2008, the Project for Excellence in Journalism studied every minute of the three commercial networks’ nightly newscast, 30 minutes of PBS’ evening newscast and the first 30 minutes of the weekday morning shows. That represents a universe of 19,796 stories or about 915 hours of network news.
Some of the key findings about network news in 2008 include:

Network news coverage of the presidential election, the U.S. economy and the war in Iraq closely tracked with the overall level of media coverage last year. Even so, one tendency of the network broadcasts, similar to that of the newspaper sector, was to provide a somewhat broader and more varied news menu than the media in general.

Last year, as was the case in 2007, there was virtually no difference in the news agenda of the three big networks. The real contrasts emerge between the morning and evening news shows. There was significantly more election coverage in the morning than at night and more coverage of such things as Iraq and Afghanistan in the evening. Crime was significantly bigger in the morning, whereas education and health were much more prevalent in the evening.

The conventional wisdom that cable news wrested the election franchise away from network news overlooks the role broadcasters played in the 2008 race. The most memorable Sarah Palin interviews were with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and particularly CBS’ Katie Couric. Colin Powell’s newsmaking endorsement of Barack Obama came on NBC’s Meet the Press. And all the widely watched general election debates were moderated by network broadcast journalists.

The nightly PBS newscast, the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, differs substantially from its commercial network competitors in both format and news agenda. One of the most notable differences in 2008 was the NewsHour’s far more extensive coverage of international stories and events—everywhere from Iraq to Zimbabwe to the Gaza Strip.

Top Stories on Network TV vs. Media Over All

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

The Network News Agenda: Better Rounded Than Most

Throughout 2008, the news agenda in the media was dominated by two stories—the presidential election and the sharp downturn in the U.S. economy. And to a large extent, the main priorities of the three broadcast networks were similar to those of the broader media universe.

The historic presidential election of 2008 filled 32% of the network newshole compared with 36% in the media over all. The economy accounted for 16% of the network coverage compared with 15% over all. And networks devoted 3% of their newshole to the Iraq war, a number that was 4% in the media in general.

In certain areas, however, network television offered a higher level of coverage than the norm, similar to the newspaper sector’s tendency to deliver a relatively broad news mix in a year of narrowing coverage. Network news, which has traditionally dedicated substantial reporting resources to medical science, led all five media sectors in coverage of health and medicine (5% compared with 3% in the media in general). And due in part to the strong visual component of many disasters and accidents, the networks provided the most coverage of them (7%) in 2008—almost twice as much as the 4% in the media over all.

The data also suggest this visual orientation may have also influenced the nature of the coverage of the second-biggest story of the year—the economy. While the level of economic coverage on network news was only marginally different from the media over all, more of that attention than elsewhere was focused on energy costs and gas prices, which proved in the end to be something of a distraction from the credit and housing crisis that created the economic meltdown. In 2008, network news devoted more time to “pain at the pump” than any other media sector, thanks to an explosion of midyear coverage. In May, June and July—as oil surged to over $140 a barrel and a gallon of regular gasoline moved past $4—energy prices filled 8% of the network television newshole compared with 5% in the media over all.

Gas and Oil Prices Coverage Over Time: Network TV vs Media Over All

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Network Morning vs. Network Evening: Two Different News Views

An examination of network coverage in 2008 reveals the same pattern we saw the previous year. There was virtually no difference in the news agenda of the three big commercial broadcast networks. When it came to the election, ABC and NBC devoted 33% of their newshole to that subject compared with 31% for CBS. On the economy, there was almost no difference (16% on ABC and CBS and 15% on NBC.) And all three networks devoted 3% of the newshole to Iraq. Indeed, seven of the year’s top-10 stories were the same on ABC, CBS and NBC.

Top Stories: NBC vs. ABC vs. CBS
Percent of Newshole

NBC			ABC		CBS
1	Election*	33%	Election*	33%	Election*	31%
2	U.S. Economy^†	15	U.S. Economy^†	16	U.S. Economy^†	16
3	Olympics	3	Iraq War^‡	3	Iraq War^‡	3
4	Iraq War^‡	3	Olympics	2	Olympics	1
5	Afghanistan	1	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	1	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	1
6	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	1	Violent Summer Weather	1	Violent Summer Weather	1
7	Blagojevich Scandal	1	Holiday Season	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
8	Violent Summer Weather	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1	Mumbai Terror Attacks	1
9	China	1	Chinese Earthquake	1	Georgia/Russian Conflict	1
10	Hurricane Ike	1	Afghanistan	1	Chinese Earthquake	1

The results were the same when coverage was examined by broader subject areas. Each of the three networks devoted about the same percentage of their newshole to elections/politics, foreign affairs (international stories directly related to the U.S. and those that were not), economics, health, disasters, crime and education. In fact, they agreed on nine out of the 10 top topics in 2008.

Top Broad Topics: NBC vs. ABC vs. CBS
Percent of Newshole

NBC		ABC		CBS
Elections/Politics	31%	Elections/Politics	31%	Elections/Politics	29%
Economics	11	Economics	12	Economics	12
Foreign (Non-U.S.)	7	Disasters/Accidents	7	Disaster/Accidents	7
Disasters/Accidents	6	Foreign (non-U.S.)	7	Foreign (non-U.S.)	6
Crime	5	U.S. Miscellaneous	5	Business	5
U.S. Foreign Affairs	5	Health/Medicine	5	Health/Medicine	5
Health/Medicine	4	Crime	5	Crime	5
Business	4	Business	4	U.S. Miscellaneous	5
U.S. Miscellaneous	4	U.S. Foreign Affairs	4	U.S. Foreign Affairs	4
Government	4	Lifestyle	4	Lifestyle	4

The significant differences in news priorities emerged not between rival networks, but between the tightly produced evening newscasts and the somewhat chattier morning shows—NBC’s Today, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’ Early Show. (The PEJ examines the first 30 minutes of morning show content, when the more immediate, harder news is covered.)

Let’s start with the biggest story of the year. There was substantially more election news on the three morning shows (37% of the newshole) than in the evening (27%). Conversely, there was more coverage of the nation’s economic woes (17%) in the evening than in the morning broadcasts (14%).

A bigger difference emerged in the attention to the two shooting wars in which the U.S. is currently engaged. On the nightly news, 5% of the newshole was devoted to combined coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan. That is more than twice the attention (2%) given to those stories in the morning hours.

When it came to broader topics, other differences showed up. Crime coverage was about 50% bigger in the morning—6% compared with 4% at night. (On the morning shows, for example, coverage related to the raid on the Texas polygamy compound was the No. 4 story of the year, generating about twice as much coverage as in the evening.) At the same time, viewers were more than three times more likely to see health coverage in the evening (7%) as they were in the morning (2%).

Top Stories: Network Morning vs. Network Evening
Percent of Newshole

	Network Morning	Network Evening (w/o PBS)
1	Election*	Election*
2	U.S. Economy^†	U.S. Economy^†
3	2008 Olympics	Iraq War^‡
4	Warrent Jeffs and Texas Raid	2008 Olympics
5	Iraq War^‡	Afghanistan
6	Violent Summer Weather	Violent Summer Weather
7	Blagojevich Scandal	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid
8	Holiday Season	Blagojevich Scandal
9	Hurrican Gustav	Chinese Earthquake
10	Mumbai Terror Attacks	Hurricane Ike

These morning versus evening differences are much bigger than any differences among the networks. ABC’s Good Morning America, for example, devoted 39% of its airtime to the presidential election while World News Tonight on the same network allocated 27% of the airtime studied to that story. The presidential election made up 39% of the newshole on NBC’s Today show, but accounted for only 26% of the coverage on the evening newscast. Only on CBS was the amount of election coverage relatively similar in the morning (33%) and in the evening (29%).

Network News and the Election: Horse Race in the Morning, Policy at Night

Not only were there substantial differences in the amount of election coverage offered on the morning and evening news broadcasts, but they also diverged when it came to the key elements of that coverage.

The three morning news shows, for starters, were focused heavily on the horse race aspect of the campaign — who was ahead or behind, the tactics and strategy of the race. More than two-thirds of the campaign coverage (70%) airing in the first half-hour of the morning shows was focused on the horse race, substantially higher than the 57% in the media over all. Only 11% of the coverage on the morning shows was devoted to policy issues compared with 13% over all.

The campaign was reported quite differently in the evening hours. There, the horse race accounted for 59% of the campaign newshole, slightly higher than in the overall number. And coverage of policy accounted for another 15%, substantially more than in the morning (11%).¹

Why the intense focus on the horse race in the morning? In a campaign in which the candidates were often on the stump and making news late into the night, these early newscasts often seemed intent on resetting the state of the race—calibrating the candidates’ strategic positions and gauging the impact of the latest skirmishing—at the outset of each new morning news cycle.

Frame of Campaign Coverage
Percent of Campaign Newshole

	Network Morning	Network Evening	Media Over All
Political Horse Race	70%	59%	57%
Political Other*	10	11	13
Policy	11	15	13
Personal	5	7	7
Other	2	5	6
Public Record	1	2	3

*Includes stories about advertisements, electoral calendar, endorsements and treatment by the press

Major Campaign Moments on Network News

In some ways, the role of broadcast news in the 2008 election may have been understated. The conventional wisdom that cable news, with its relentless coverage and sizable ratings increases, grabbed the campaign franchise away from network news misses something. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose interactions with the press were tightly controlled, sat down for two important interviews with ABC anchor Charlie Gibson and CBS anchor Katie Couric.

The Couric interview—when Palin stressed the strategic proximity of Russia to Alaska and couldn’t or wouldn’t mention the names of newspapers she read—may well have been one of the pivotal moments of the campaign. The Alaska governor clearly stumbled and raised doubts about her readiness. She was later quoted questioning the campaign’s decision to send her back for more after the first Couric interview had gone poorly.

Another important moment occurred on October 19, only 15 days before the voting, when President George Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin Powell, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, endorsed Obama and called him a “transformational figure.” That event dominated some precious news cycles in the waning days of the campaign.

It is also worth noting that the four general election debates were moderated by broadcast network journalists—Gwen Ifill and Jim Lehrer of PBS, Bob Schieffer of CBS and Tom Brokaw of NBC. The second Obama-McCain face-off attracted the largest viewership of any presidential debate since 1992 and the audience for the Palin-Biden meeting was the biggest for any television debate since Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter squared off in 1980.

During the campaign, candidates also made news by actively making the rounds on morning network shows. On February 5, the day of the crucial Super Tuesday contests, Hillary Clinton appeared on all three network morning shows encouraging people to come out and vote. On July 9, Obama was on all three network morning shows explaining his stance on Iran’s missile test. And just as the financial crisis was exploding, John McCain was talking on September 16 about the economy and his ability to handle the financial crisis on the morning circuit.

Format in Network TV

Our previous examinations of evening network news have found a certain thoroughness and precision of reporting not seen in cable or even on the morning news—a characteristic stemming largely from a reliance on taped and edited correspondent packages as the core of the nightly newscast. Even with continuing financial pressures on the networks, those qualities were maintained.

Story Format ABC vs. CBS vs. NBC
Percent of Newshole

	ABC Evening	CBS Evening	NBC Evening
Package	82%	82%	78%
Interview	9	8	9
Anchor Read	7	8	9
Staff Live	2	2	4
Live (event or external live)	<1	<1	<1
Unedited Audio/Video	<1	0	0
Other	0	0	<1

In 2008, correspondent packages made up 81% of the time on the nightly newscasts, down only negligibly from 2007 (82%). Anchor interviews rose from 6% in 2007 to 8% in 2008. ABC and CBS relied more on taped packages than NBC, a continuation of a trend we saw in 2007.

One significant format change was the increase in anchor interviews on the CBS Evening News—doubling to 8% from 4% in 2007. When Couric arrived at CBS from NBC’s Today show in late 2006, interviewing was considered to be one of her strong points and initially it was a significant part of her role in the newscast. But in 2007, the network narrowed her anchor role and cut back on the interview time. Last year, that decision was apparently revisited and it produced perhaps the most memorable network conversation of the year—the Palin sit-down.

Story Format: Various TV News
Percent of Newshole

	Network Morning	Network Evening (w/o PBS)	PBS	Cable
Package	45%	81%	36%	26%
Interview	36	8	56%	46
Anchor Read	8	8	7	9
Staff Live	7	3	<1	15
Live (event or external live)	<1	<1	<1	4
Unedited Audio/Video	<1	<1	<1	<1
Other	5	<1	0	1

The trend on the morning broadcasts in 2008 was toward more interviews and fewer reported packages. Anchor interviews filled 36% of airtime studied in 2008, up from 30% a year earlier. The percentage of the morning newshole devoted to taped packages fell to 44% last year compared with 50% in 2007. That decrease occurred across the board at Good Morning America (50% vs. 54%), the Early Show (44% from 51%) and Today (40% from 46%).

The NewsHour: More International, More Interviews

The PBS nightly newscast, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is considered by many as an alternative broadcast to the three major networks for a number of reasons, including its length, its news priorities and its format. The hour-long program is mostly interview-driven, with the first seven minutes or so devoted to a summary of the day’s news, followed generally by three to five interviews exploring topics further.

But these interviews are quite different than on network morning and evening newscasts. The segments are longer (on average four minutes vs. three on morning shows and two on evening newscasts) and usually involve analysts and scholars.
The topic agenda also differed on the NewsHour.

One clear finding is that the PBS newscast was considerably more focused on stories beyond the U.S. borders. Besides Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the cyclone in Myanmar, the turmoil inside Pakistan, the elections in Zimbabwe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all made the NewsHour’s top-10 roster of stories in 2008. With the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan, none of them were on that list on the commercial networks’ nightly programs.

The NewsHour’s greater emphasis on overseas events was even more obvious when coverage was examined on the broader subject level. Almost a quarter (23%) of the newshole on PBS was devoted to foreign affairs (both those that directly involved the U.S. and those that did not) while those subjects accounted for 13% on the three commercial network newscasts.

Compared with the commercial networks’ evening newscasts, the NewsHour offered more presidential election coverage in 2008, with32% of the airtime studied devoted to the story compared with 27% of evening network news. But there was somewhat less of the campaign horse race on PBS (54%) than on the other evening programs (59%) and there was more coverage of policy issues on the NewsHour (19%) than on its commercial competitors (15%).

The U.S. economy also received more coverage on PBS—20% of the newshole versus 17% on the commercial networks’ nightly news. And the NewsHour devoted 6% of its newshole to the Iraq war compared with 4% on the evening broadcasts.

Top Stories PBS vs. Network TV (w/o PBS)
Percent of Newshole

	PBS		Network TV (w/o PBS)
1	Election*	32%	Election*	32%
2	U.S. Economy^†	20	U.S. Economy^†	16
3	Iraq War^‡	6	Iraq War^‡	3
4	U.S Domestic Terrorism	2	Olympics	2
5	Myanmar Cyclone	1	Warren Jeffs and Texas Raid	1
6	Supreme Court Actions	1	Violent Summer Weather	1
7	Afghanistan	1	Afghanistan	1
8	Pakistan	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
9	Zimbabwe Elections	1	Holiday Season	1
10	Israeli/Palestinian Conflict	1	Chinese Earthquake	1

Footnotes

1. There was little variation among the networks in the way the race was conveyed on their nightly newscasts. The ABC, CBS and NBC broadcasts all framed 59% of their campaign stories as horse race while 15% of ABC, 13% of NBC and 17% of CBS election stories were policy related. In the morning hours, there were somewhat larger distinctions between networks. On Today, 74% of election stories were about the horse race (the highest in network television) compared with 71% for the Early Show and 66% for GMA. NBC’s Today also offered the lowest proportion of policy stories (9%) compared with 11% on CBS’ Early Show and 12% on ABC’s GMA.

Cable Content

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

The Cable News Agenda: The Election, The Election, The Election

In a news year dominated by two major stories, the television sector with the most time to fill, cable news, offered the narrowest news agenda of all. According to an analysis of the coverage examined by PEJ, the cable TV channels spent about three out of every five minutes on a single story: the 2008 presidential election.

That helped them enjoy sizable ratings increases in 2008, but it raised the question going forward of whether these outlets had a second act that would retain their audience once the ballots were cast, and the early indicators were mixed. CNN and MSNBC lost much of their audience gains. Fox, after a drop, saw its audience jump in the early days of the Obama administration. (See Cable Audience Section)

Cable’s affinity for the presidential election was foreshadowed in 2007, when the sector devoted 15% of the airtime studied to the early stages of the race. But in 2008, that level of coverage swelled to 59%.

The attention was not evenly dispersed. There are—literally and figuratively—day and night differences in news priorities, with the talk-oriented prime-time lineups responsible for the lopsided focus on the election. And within the cable universe itself, MSNBC, the self-proclaimed “Place for Politics,” distinguished itself from CNN and the Fox News Channel with an even more spectacularly single-minded focus on the election throughout the day.

Top Stories: Cable vs. Other Media Sectors

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008
Note: Election includes stories about the campaign, results, and the transition
U.S. Economy includes stories about the financial crisis, economic numbers, gas/oil prices, auto industry, and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae
Iraq War includes stories about Iraq policy debate, events in Iraq, and Iraq homefront

The cable television news agenda in 2008 was the most constricted of any of the five basic media sectors studied—radio, online, network television, newspapers and cable. The campaign, election results and subsequent transition to the Obama administration accounted for 59% of all the airtime studied on CNN, the Fox News Channel and MSNBC. That translates into about 60% more coverage on cable than the election received in the media over all, even with the election the top story in all media sectors.

The other part of the picture is the news that was squeezed out by the medium’s election-centric fascination. The floundering U.S. economy, which exploded as a major news story in mid-September with the sharp decline on Wall Street and distress in the banking industry, accounted for 10% of the airtime studied on cable—a third less than the 15% of over all media coverage last year, and the smallest of any sector studied.

The constriction also extended to the Iraq war and foreign news in general in 2008. While coverage of Iraq decreased in the media over all by about three quarters from 2007 to 2008, it plunged by almost 90% in cable (to only 2% of the newshole from 15% in 2007), making it the sector devoting the least attention to one of the longest wars in U.S. history.

And it wasn’t just Iraq. Any news from overseas was hard to find on cable. Only 8% of the newshole studied was filled by coverage of foreign events. That compares with 17% for global news in the media over all. The combined cable coverage of such international stories as Afghanistan and Pakistan—two nations deeply intertwined with U.S. security interests—filled about 1% of the newshole, about 30% as much coverage as in the media over all.

Instead of simmering foreign or domestic news, cable tended to focus its non-election airtime on more attention-getting, one-time events. The deadly Mumbai attacks that terrorized India, for example, generated more coverage in cable than any other sector. It was also the only media platform in which the Caylee Anthony case, involving the missing toddler in Orlando, Florida, whose mother was charged with her murder, was a top-10 story for the year. The same is true of the splashy sex scandal that ensnared the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, in Washington.

Top Stories: Cable vs. Media Over All
Percent of Newshole

Cable		Media Over All
Election*	59%	Election*	36%
U.S. Economy^†	10	U.S. Economy^†	15
Blagojevich Scandal	2	Iraq War^‡	4
Iraq War^‡	2	Domestic Terrorism	1
Immigration	1	2008 Olympics	1
Mumbai Terror Attacks	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
Domestic Terrorism	1	Afghanistan	1
Caylee Anthony	1	Pakistan	1
Spitzer Scandal	1	Immigration	1
Scott McClellan's Book	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1

Daytime Vs. Prime Time: Night and Day

There was more coverage of the Mumbai, Caylee Anthony and Spitzer stories in daytime cable than on prime time, which hints at another finding clear in the data from 2008.

The cable news universe is divided into distinctly different parts. During the day, the emphasis is more on covering a handful of breaking—or pending—news events, with a much smaller audience tuning in. At night, when the talk shows take over, commentators and pundits dissect and magnify the one or two biggest developments that lend themselves to debate and disagreement, and play to audiences that are about double that of daytime. It is this more narrowly focused prime time that attracts the most viewers, features each channel’s best-known talent and most sharply defines the personalities of the channels.

When it came to the proportion of time devoted to the two big stories of the year, daytime cable looked very much like the media over all. It spent 35% of the airtime studied on the election, almost exactly in sync with the media in general, which filled 36% of its time and space with election coverage. Daytime cable also filled 15% of its newshole with coverage of the economy, matching the output in the media over all (15%).

But the subjects that made up the remainder of airtime were quite different on daytime cable than in the media over all or on evening cable. One story in which daytime cable lagged well behind the media was the Iraq war. It accounted for only 1% of the newshole—about one-third of the over all coverage devoted to the story in the broader media. Coverage of foreign news in general was minimal, filling only 10% of the daytime newshole—a little over half the coverage that topic got in the general media (17%). The second-biggest international story, behind Iraq, was the Mumbai terror attacks (also 1%), but events such as the war in Afghanistan and the situation in neighboring Pakistan were all but ignored.

Instead, crime and disasters registered as significant topics on daytime cable. Driven by stories such as the Caylee Anthony case and a polygamy sect in Texas, general crime coverage accounted for 13% of the daytime cable newshole studied, almost three times as much as in the media over all (5%). Coverage of severe weather, including Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, helped disasters and accidents fill 8% of the daytime newshole, double the 4% in the media in general.

Viewers of prime-time cable saw a very different array of news. In the main, prime-time cable in 2008 closely resembled talk radio with pictures. Both platforms placed a premium on high-octane opining and polarizing punditry that tended to magnify the biggest stories. This resulted in relentless coverage of the election (65% in prime-time cable and 60% in talk radio) and lack of attention to the economy (8% of the newshole in both cases). Even with the relative scarcity of financial coverage, however, almost three- quarters of the prime-time newshole was given over to those two subjects—leaving precious little time for anything else.

While prime-time cable devoted more coverage to the Iraq war (2%) than daytime, it still offered only about half the attention the war received in the media over all.

And that extended to coverage of overseas events generally, which accounted for just 7% of the cable prime time studied. That was less than half that in the media over all.

Cable in the evening hours also paid only modest attention to domestic topics that were not about politics, such as disasters and lifestyle issues. They did, however, devote more coverage than the media in general to such politically related stories as the scandal involving the Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, and the book by President George Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, that was critical of his ex-boss.

Top Stories: Daytime and Evening Cable vs. Media Over All
Percent of Newshole

Daytime Cable		Evening Cable		Media Over All
Election*	35%	Election*	65%	Election*	36%
U.S. Economy^†	15	U.S. Economy^†	8	U.S. Economy^†	15
Caylee Anthony	3	Blagojevich Scandal	2	Iraq War^‡	4
Violent Summer Weather	1	Iraq War^‡	2	Domestic Terrorism	1
Iraq War^‡	1	Immigration	2	2008 Olympics	1
Blagojevich Scandal	1	Mumbai Terror Attacks	1	Blagojevich Scandal	1
Spitzer Scandal	1	Domestic Terrorism	1	Afghanistan	1
Mumbai Terror Attacks	1	Scott McClellan's Book	1	Pakistan	1
Domestic Terrorism	1	Spitzer Scandal	1	Immigration	1
Texas Polygamy Case	1	Iran	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1

Differences By Channel: MSNBC, the ‘Place for Politics,’ Stands Alone

There were distinctions among the three major cable channels themselves in prime-time news judgment. Fox News, for example, tended to focus more on crime, while CNN covered more immigration than the others. The most glaring differences, though, stemmed largely from virtually wall-to-wall coverage of the presidential election by one cable channel, MSNBC.

In 2008, MSNBC solidified its niche as a left-leaning alternative to the conservative Fox News Channel, adding Air America radio talker Rachel Maddow to a prime-time lineup that already showcased the liberal politics of “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann. (See Cable News Investment) But branding itself as the “Place for Politics” slogan may have been just as intrinsic to its identity.

Including all time slots studied, MSNBC devoted nearly three-quarters of its coverage (72%) to the election, easily outstripping CNN (55%) and Fox News (52%).

And MSBNC maintained a substantial lead in political coverage round the clock. In daytime, 50% of its newshole was filled by the election, compared with 31% on Fox News and 26% on CNN. In the evening hours, the breakdown was 80% for MSNBC, 62% for CNN and 57% for the Fox News Channel.

Top Two Stories: Coverage by Cable Channel
Percent of Newshole

	MSNBC		CNN		Talk Radio
	Daytime	Evening	Dayitme	Evening	Daytime	Evening
Election*	50%	80%	26%	62%	31%	57%
U.S. Economy^†	11	5	21	10	14	9

* Includes stories about the campaign, results, and the transition
† Includes stories about the financial crisis, economic issues, gas/oil prices, auto industry, and Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae

MSNBC also showed more interest in political stories not directly related to the election. (One of its anchors, Chris Matthews, made political headlines of his own with speculation that he might challenge Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican, in 2010, a move he ultimately decided against.) The channel paid a bit more attention to Scott McClellan’s harsh evaluation of his former boss, focused more on former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards’ marital infidelity and devoted a bit more coverage to the Blagojevich scandal than its two rivals. (The one exception was the Spitzer scandal, which received marginally more attention on Fox News and CNN.)

MSNBC’s exceptional focus on the election translated into considerably less coverage of everything, including the faltering economy, the second-biggest story of the year. The economy accounted for only 7% of MSNBC’s coverage (less than the 12% on CNN and 10% on Fox News). That trend, too, was maintained in both daytime and evening programming.

There was less attention as well to crime, disasters and accidents and immigration on MSNBC. And while Iraq coverage was minimal on all three networks, MSNBC devoted only 4% of its airtime to foreign coverage in 2008—less than half the time allotted to international news (9%) on both Fox News and CNN.

Select Broad Topics: Coverage by Cable News Channel

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

The Cable Channels and the Candidates—Three Different Perspectives

Not only did the topic agenda vary some by network, but a close look at the content also documents that the tone did as well. In a year dominated by politics, the three cable news networks came to fill distinctly different ideological niches. MSNBC tacked farther to the left, establishing itself as a liberal counterweight to Fox News, whose lineup of programs is more conservative. CNN’s roster of commentators filled the political spectrum, but its prime-time hosts, with the exception of Lou Dobbs, tend to be more neutral, at least in their on-air presentation. (See Cable News Investment)

And there were substantial differences in how the three networks portrayed the presidential candidates during a crucial stretch of the general election—September 8 through November 2—that started after the nominating conventions and ended two days before the voting.

An examination of the tone of that campaign coverage revealed that MSNBC was much less likely to air negative segments about Barack Obama than the press over all. Just 16% of MSNBC segments studied about Obama were clearly negative in tone, compared with 27% in the news media over all. It also ran a slightly higher percentage of positive Obama stories, 40% vs. 38% in all news media.

MSNBC was also much more likely than to run negative stories about John McCain than the media over all, which was already quite rough. Fully 75% of McCain stories were negative (vs. 57% generally), while only 9% were positive (compared with 14% in the news media over all).

Fox News coverage of the candidates was in many ways the reverse of MSNBC’s. It was far more likely to air negative stories or segments about Obama than the media over all (43% vs. 27%), and much less likely to run positive ones (24% vs. 38%). Toward McCain, Fox News was more likely to be positive than other media (22% vs. 14% in the press over all) and substantially less likely to be negative (38% vs. 57% in the press over all).

CNN fell in the middle. Its coverage was closer than any other cable news channel to the press in general. If anything it was a little more critical of Obama than the media over all (36% negative versus 27% negative). For McCain, it hewed closely to the media generally.

Tone of Coverage: Obama vs. McCain
Percent of Campaign Stories, September 8-November 2, 2008

	MSNBC		CNN		Fox News		Media over all
	Obama	McCain	Obama	McCain	Obama	McCain	Obama	McCain
Positive	40%	9%	38%	15%	24%	22%	38%	15%
Negative	16	75	36	59	43	38	27	57
Neutral	44	16	26	25	33	41	34	29

Fox News and some conservatives have viewed these numbers as proof of Fox’s objectivity, since the tone of coverage toward Obama and McCain were quite similar. By treating the two candidates the same, the argument went, it was the most neutral channel. We think this is a misreading of the data.

Campaigns are rare events that offer some objective measure for tone—the candidates’ standing in the polls. The candidate who is winning tends to get more positive coverage, if only because the political stories—such as strategy, tactics and the horse race— that make up the biggest percentage of campaign coverage reflect and reinforce the candidates’ standing in the race. It follows that Obama’s coverage would be “better” than McCain’s. He was winning, and indeed, most of Obama’s positive stories were horse race stories.¹

If one candidate is clearly ahead and the other is struggling, and horse race stories are part of the mix studied, it makes little sense that the tone of the coverage of the two candidates would be similar. That would not reflect the reality of the race.

The question is what level of “better’ coverage is too much, which is a difficult question to answer. One way of putting the coverage of Fox News and MCNBC into perspective is to calculate the extent to which they deviated from the rest of the media by computing the statistical differences for both networks from the press over all. By this calculus, Fox News varied from the press over all by 46%, and MSNBC varied by 29%.² Whatever one’s view is of the mainstream press, these two cable channels vary from each other even more.

Campaign Themes for Select Cable Shows

January 6 - November 3, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Another indicator of how cable news treated the candidates was which election themes the hosts chose to focus on. Here again, we had some clear distinctions between MSNBC and the Fox News Channel.

On both Hannity & Colmes and the O’Reilly Factor, the No. 1 election storyline from January 1 to November 3 was one that created serious political problems for Obama and was fodder for his critics — the candidate’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. That was also the case for CNN prime-time host Anderson Cooper, who largely maintains an ideologically neutral posture on his show.

Some of the favored election storylines on MSNBC were very different, with McCain as the primary target. The second-largest narrative on Olbermann’s Countdown program was a largely unfavorable discussion of the McCain campaign’s criticisms of Obama. It was also the No. 2 storyline on the Rachel Maddow show—behind only the economy/financial crisis—which was begun late in the campaign season, in September. But even at No. 2, the McCain criticism took up a much greater amount of Maddow’s time than it did on Olbermann’s program.

Differences in How the Networks, and Individual Cable Shows, Deliver the News

In 2008, the editorial personalities of the three news cable networks were also revealed in part by their formats—the percentage of newshole allotted to correspondent-reported packages, interviews, correspondent stand-ups and anchor reads.

On CNN—with a reputation for having the most reporting resources of the three cable networks—39% of the airtime studied last year was spent on packaged reported pieces. That is another measure establishing that viewers are getting more reporting and less talk there. Compare that with 24% on Fox News and only 9% on MSNBC. CNN and Fox News devoted very similar percentages of their time to another mode of reporting, live on-air staff reports, at 16% and 17%, about twice the proportion on MSNBC (9%).

And while MSNBC had the smallest percentage of reporting-oriented formatting, it easily spent the most time on interviews—68% compared with 46% on Fox News and 31% on CNN. That perhaps fits with that network’s extensive coverage of the election, a subject often driven by the opinions of pundits and analysts in panel and discussion settings.

One other way of getting a handle on a cable network’s priorities is to compare the length of their reported segments, either the pre-produced packages or the live staff reports. In both cases, there are differences among the three cable news competitors.

Not only did CNN devote the most time to packages by a significant margin, but those reports also tended to be longer than those of their competitors. The average CNN package in 2008 ran for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, compared with 2 minutes and 25 seconds on Fox News and 2 minutes on MSNBC. Lest those differences seem relatively minor, 20 seconds is a significant chunk of time in television.

By way of comparison, there is one fundamental difference between the length of reported pieces on cable news and on the broadcast networks. The average package on the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows in 2008 lasted 2 minutes and 22 seconds. But the live staff reports are considerably shorter on the broadcast networks, lasting on average only 1 minute and 23 seconds. That may reflect tighter formatting on the network shows—where correspondents say their piece and are done—as opposed to the more conversational back and forth that occurs between correspondents and anchors on cable news.

Story Format on Cable News
Percent of Newshole

		Package	Interview	Staff Live	Anchor Read	Live (event or ext. live)	Unedited Audio/Video	Other
CNN	Lou Dobs Tonight	68%	12	7	13	<1	0	0
	Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer	49	24	14	9	3	1	0
	Anderson Cooper 360	34	44	11	5	5	<1	<1
	Campbell Brown: No Bias. No Bull.	21	42	29	8	<1	<1	1
Fox News	Special Report with Brit Hume	79	1	6	14	<1	0	0
	Fox Report with Shepard Smith	28	19	37	14	<1	0	2
	The O'Reilly Factor	10	80	2	6	<1	<1	0
	Hannity & Colmes	4	89	5	1	1	<1	0
MSNBC	Countdown with Keith Olbermann	21	62	4	13	<1	0	0
	The Rachel Maddow Show	20	54	3	19	3	0	0
	Hardball with Chris Matthews	7	84	3	5	<1	1	0
	1600 Pennsylvania Ave	7	66	15	6	6	0	0
	Race for the White House	6	80	9	2	4	0	0

At the level of individual programs, there were significant differences in format. Two cable news shows are constructed more like traditional broadcast newscasts: CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight and Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume (taken over in January 2009 by Bret Baier). Both leaned heavily toward reported packages, which made up about three-quarters of the time on each show.

Several other prime-time shows offered a mix of on-air formats. CNN’s Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer, a program with some elements of traditional newscast formatting, spent about half its time airing packages—with about a quarter of the show devoted to interviews. On Anderson Cooper’s 360 show on CNN, about a third of the time was taken up with reported packages with half the time devoted to interviews. Live staff reports constituted the biggest component—about one-third—of Shepard Smith’s Fox Report, but more than a quarter of the time was consumed with package reports as well.

Most of the rest of cable’s prime time is built as pure talk shows that rely largely on interviews, although here, too, there were differences. Three of the prime-time shows are all almost talk, with a heavy tilt toward interviews. Interview segments accounted for at least four-fifths of the airtime on Hannity & Colmes, Hardball and the O’Reilly Factor. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Hannity & Colmes and Hardball were among the shows devoting the most attention to the election. And O’Reilly has traditionally made his encounters with guests a linchpin of his program.

Two of MSNBC’s prime-time stars—Olbermann and Maddow—led more highly produced talk-oriented shows that devoted most of their time to interviews, but still had a relatively large chunk of reported packages. On both Countdown and the Rachel Maddow Show, interviews accounted for more than half the airtime, but about one-fifth of their time was also devoted to reported packages.

How Hosts Use the Camera and Microphone

Some hosts make their imprint on their shows by dominating their interviews and panel discussions. But other hosts also put their stamp on their shows by spending more time talking directly to the camera in more formalized monologues and commentaries. Who are those?

It’s not, as some might have guessed, Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly.

It is other hosts on cable who spend their time talking alone directly to the camera, either delivering personalized monologues or commentaries to the audience or reading “tell stories,” anchor-narrated news stories that don’t involve a correspondent.

Matthews devoted only 5% of his airtime to this format, O’Reilly 6%, and the dueling duo of Hannity & Colmes 1%.

The hosts who in the time studied delivered more of this kind of direct-to-the audience communication are two of MSNBC’s prime-time stars and one on CNN. Olbermann, who gained fame as a sports anchor on ESPN, offered a good deal of personal commentary on his show, most notably his “special comment” segment. He was tied at 13% with CNN’s Dobbs, who no doubt spent some of that time doing “tell” stories in his more standard newscast format.

The leader among talk-oriented hosts was MSNBC’s Maddow, who filled almost one-fifth (19%) of her airtime with anchor reads. In some ways, Maddow is an atypical cable host—an openly gay woman who has something of a kinder, gentler on-air demeanor than the average prime-time cable practitioner. But she was an Air America radio talk host—a job she still has—before MSNBC plunked her into it its prime-time lineup. There is no better training ground than talk radio for delivering monologues on the air.

Footnotes

1. See the MSNBC Mobile section on the Web site for details

2. Scott Leith, “CNN to Start Web site for Viewer’s Journalism,” the Miami Herald, August 3, 2006; Also see Online News Ownership section, State of the News Media 2007.

3. Elise Ackerman, “New media making deals with old news providers,” San Jose Mercury News, July 31, 2006

4. As Greg D’Alba, CNN’s head of marketing and sales, was quoted as saying, event marketing gives the CNN brand the opportunity to extend itself beyond the television channel to all digital media, specifically to initiatives like podcasts and video-on-demand.

5. On September 11, 2006 it used CNN Pipeline to stream the TV channel’s coverage of the original terrorist attacks, exemplifying how it can be used for value added content.

6. While Pipeline is fee-based, most digital offshoots and hybrids are typically advertising-supported and therefore free for consumers. Unofficially, many Internet-savvy users have figured out how to download virtually any TV show they want for free. Using file-sharing software, they have set up Web sites where they share digital video recordings. The most prominent of those is YouTube.

7. Jon Fine, “How Fox was Outfoxed,” Business Week, February 13, 2006

8. The two newscasts are also available on the News Corp. sister site MySpace.com and through iTunes. Customers who have video capability on their Cingular, Sprint or Amp’d phones can also get them. Paul J. Gough, “Fox Making News in a Flash,” Hollywood Reporter, October 30, 2006

9. Glen Dickson, “Fox News Channel Provides Audio-to-Go,” Broadcasting & Cable, January 17, 2007

Radio Content

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

The presidential election provided ready fodder for the nation’s talk show hosts, who made full use of the opportunity –to the exclusion of many other topics.

The headline newscasts of ABC and CBS, however, took the opposite approach. The amount of the newshole that they devoted in 2008 to the election was less than that of the talk show hosts and the media in general. Economic and business news loomed larger for the network headline services.

National Public Radio’s political coverage was a little closer to the average of the media at large in terms of newshole. NPR listeners heard less about the economy and business, crime, health and disasters, than they did from the radio headline services. But the public radio outlet provided almost twice as much international coverage as the media over all.

Talk Radio Hosts’ Favorite Topics: The Election (and Themselves)

In a heated and historic election year, the campaigns and politics accounted for 60% of the radio talk newshole in 2008.

Nothing else came close. But the No. 2 subject said something fundamental about the talk business. It wasn’t an economy in meltdown or foreign events, with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, the talkers’ second-favorite subject (for the second year in a row) often involved invoking the first person pronoun. Conversations about the media, much of which focused on the hosts themselves, accounted for almost one-tenth of the talk newshole in the year.

In a medium that is very much about the person behind the microphone connecting with listeners, self-referential comments often come with the territory for conservative talkers Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage and their liberal counterparts Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes. And no talk host has used the microphone to market himself as successfully as Limbaugh, who signed a new contract last year that reportedly will pay him $400 million over eight years.

Limbaugh generates a good deal of mainstream media attention—he was profiled in the New York Times Sunday magazine in July—and that often becomes a topic on his program. On March 10, for example, he spent time discussing media reaction to controversial and somewhat off-color comments he made about a possible Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket. After counting up various media references to him, Limbaugh said, “That’s a dilemma for somebody who doesn’t want to make the show about themselves… I find it fascinating how I am continually misunderstood” in the mainstream press.

But Limbaugh has no monopoly on making himself a subject of his program. On his October 20 show, Schultz used some airtime to discuss his decision to walk off the Fox News Channel’s morning show when he felt he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“What other lefty has the [vulgar term] to walk out on Fox News in the middle of an interview?” he asked. “I’m tired of being interrupted on Fox… Americans don’t think they’re fair and balanced.”

When you add up the airtime devoted to politics and the media, those two subjects consumed nearly three-quarters of all the talk radio programming studied by PEJ last year. And in a year in which the over all media agenda was narrow, no platform was as restricted and constricted as talk radio.

The 60% of the talk radio newshole filled by the election and politics compared with 34% of the over all newshole among all media and even exceeded the 56% of cable news airtime devoted to the subject. (With its debate-oriented prime-time lineup heavily reliant on commentary and punditry, cable news is in many ways similar to talk radio.) Conversely, coverage of business and economics—which accounted for 15% of the over all media coverage in 2008—filled only 8% of the talk radio airtime. Coverage of overseas events, both those directly involving the U.S. and those that did not, fell across the board last year. But while they still represented 17% of the over all media newshole, that number was only 4% in talk radio.

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

Talk Radio		Media Over All
Elections/Politics	60%	Elections/Politics	34%
Media	9	Economics	11
Economics	6	Foreign (Non U.S.)	10
Government	4	U.S. Foreign Affairs	6
Crime	3	Crime	5
U.S. Foreign Affairs	3	Business	4
Environment	2	Government	4
Additional Domestic Affairs	2	Disasters/Accidents	4
Race/Gender/Gay Issues	2	Health/Medicine	3
Business	2	Lifestyle	2

Breaking down the coverage more specifically provides an even sharper sense of the talk hosts’ decision to largely take a pass on events beyond our borders. In the over all media roster of major stories last year, the Iraq war accounted for 4% of the coverage; it was only 1% in talk radio. And such international sagas such as the war in Afghanistan and unrest in Pakistan, which were among the top 10 stories over all in the media, were nowhere to be found on talk radio’s roster of top subjects.

And with the campaign monopolizing the airwaves, the coverage of a number of domestic topics—from crime to lifestyle—decreased from 2007 to 2008. Nowhere was this trend more obvious than with the subject of immigration. In 2007—as conservative talk hosts like Limbaugh and Hannity waged an on-air crusade to defeat a major immigration bill—that topic accounted for 4% of the over all talk airtime. In 2008, it plunged to less than 1%.

Top Stories: Liberal Talk Radio vs. Conservative Talk Radio
Percent of Newshole

Liberal Talk Radio		Conservative Talk Radio
Election*	60%	Election*	60%
U.S. Economy^†	9	U.S. Economy^†	7
Domestic Terrorism	2	Blagojevich Scandal	2
Blagojevich Scandal	1	Global Warming	2
Engergy	1	Energy	1
Iraq War^‡	1	Georgia/Russia Conflict	1
Spitzer Scandal	1	Iraq War^‡	1
New Congress	1	Spitzer Scandal	1
Scott McClellan's Book	1	Israel/Palestinian Conflict	1
Iran	1	Same-Sex Marriage	1

How the Hosts’ Ideology Affects Their Choice of Topics

The 2007 immigration debate, which was driven by right-leaning talkers and given short shrift by liberals, illustrated the ideological divide when it comes to determining which subjects get airtime. In 2008, that gap was not particularly evident in the quantity of coverage of stories such as the election, Iraq and the economy. But other events reflected a clear philosophical gap when it came to deciding which stories were worthy of discussion.

One of those subjects was global warming. In 2008, it was a top-five story for conservative talkers with hosts such as Limbaugh and Savage often arguing that the media and liberals were overplaying the threat to the environment. On liberal talk radio, that subject did not even appear among the year’s 15 hottest topics. At the same time, U.S. efforts to combat terror at home was a top-five story for liberal talkers, with Rhodes in particular attacking the Bush administration on things like torture and eavesdropping. But that subject was nowhere to be found among the top stories on the conservative side of the dial.

Another obvious example was the reaction to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book. As the title suggests, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” included a tough critique of McClellan’s former boss, President George W. Bush. McClellan was not treated as a hero by either side; Rhodes took him to task for his role as Bush’s press secretary and Savage saw him largely as a turncoat. But the liberal hosts were considerably more interested in the story, giving it about four times as much coverage as conservatives.

Talkers Pick Their Targets in the Presidential Race

The 2008 presidential campaign, with its spirited primary fights on both sides, created some interesting challenges and opportunities for the ideological talk hosts as they picked their targets and favorites from a large group of competitors.

In the early part of the year, during the heaviest primary period, there were two clear talk radio villains—John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

A PEJ study of the character-oriented narratives about the candidates that appeared in the media from January 1 through March 9 found that less than one-fifth of all the assertions about McCain on talk radio were positive compared with fourth-fifths that were negative.

Hillary Clinton didn’t fare well either. Nearly half of all the assertions about her on talk radio either reinforced the idea that she lacked core beliefs (30%) or that she was personally unlikable (16%).

Some of these attacks were predictably partisan, but some came from sources that might have been considered friendly. During the primary elections, top conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity openly favored GOP hopefuls such as Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney over Mike Huckabee and McCain, whom the hosts criticized for being too moderate and well liked by the mainstream media. From January 1 to March 9, a full 73% of the assertions about McCain from the three right-tilting hosts in our sample supported the idea that the Arizona senator was not a reliable conservative.

“The drive-by media is doing everything it can to disqualify the true conservatives on the Republican side,” Limbaugh told listeners in January. “What you’re being told is the only two candidates left that have any chance whatsoever are McCain and Huckabee, which is exactly what the drive-bys want. They want [a] liberal moderate nominee.” Hannity concurred, declaring, “There is clearly an effort [by the media] under way, I think, to convince us, the voters, to go for either, say John McCain or Mike Huckabee.”

The third conservative talker in the PEJ sample, the more contrarian Michael Savage, basically opted for a pox-on-all-their- houses approach. Early on, he called the candidates a “bunch of doddering old fools.” And he promoted his own potential candidacy for the presidency, declaring that he was the overwhelming favorite among the millions of voters who had responded to his Web poll.

For a while, the conservative talkers’ dislike of Hillary Clinton—which dates back to her stint as First Lady in the 1990s—seemed to turn into an alliance of convenience with Barack Obama. For the first few months of the year, they offered more positive assertions (55%) than negative ones (45%) about Obama. But the course of the campaign altered that dynamic. Once McCain had emerged as the presumptive GOP nominee and with the Democratic fight still raging on, Limbaugh began pushing something he called Operation Chaos. He urged Republicans to vote for Clinton in open primaries as a way of keeping the Democratic nomination battle from being resolved and preventing the party from unifying. And by the end of the general election season, Limbaugh and Hannity were aggressively attacking Obama’s candidacy, characterizing him as a radical and a socialist.

On the liberal side of the talk radio spectrum, the two hosts in the sample, Randi Rhodes and Ed Shultz, appeared to favor Obama over Clinton, particularly as the Democratic primary race dragged on.

As early as Feb. 25, just a few weeks after Super Tuesday and more than three months before Clinton would concede defeat, Schultz was calling for her to exit the race on the grounds of Democratic unity. “I think it is time for Senator Clinton to step out,” Schultz declared. “This is damaging to the party.”

The more bombastic Rhodes, no fan of the former First Lady, hammered away after Clinton’s recollection about dodging sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia was proved to be inaccurate. Rhodes called her story a “big stinkin’ lie,” adding that “every single solitary airport landing I have ever had has been more traumatic than what I saw on the video in Tuzla.”

Rhodes’ distaste for Clinton ultimately led to a career-altering experience. In March, Rhodes made news by using a crude insult to describe Clinton during a stand-up comedy routine in San Francisco. Rhodes’ employer, Air America Radio, suspended her for those remarks, leading to Rhodes’ subsequent departure from the liberal talk network where she had been a marquee name. She quickly resurfaced as a syndicated talker on the Nova M radio, where she continued to be critical of Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama. (See Talk Radio for more Information)

Radio Network Headlines: Broad, Balanced and Quick

If talk radio is designed to generate debate by cherry picking and then magnifying a few hot topics (or, as was the case in 2008, basically one hot topic) from the news landscape, the CBS and ABC radio headline broadcasts do just the opposite. They are intended to provide a quick but broad digest of the wide range of daily events. And in 2008, they delivered a carefully apportioned mix of the three most significant topics — the economy, the election and foreign affairs.

The most striking aspect of the radio headline menu was the relative lack of coverage of politics and the election—16% of the newshole, which was less than half the amount devoted to that topic by the media over all. In fact, there was substantially more coverage of economics and business (25%) in these headline services, a figure considerably larger than the 15% of the newshole given over to economics and business in the media over all. (One reason for that is the faithful recitation of stock prices frequently heard on those headline wrap-ups.) Another 13% of the airtime was devoted to foreign events, moderately less than the over all media allotment of 17% of newshole to those stories.

Those three subjects accounted for slightly more than half of the headline newshole, and several other topics got reasonable amounts of coverage as well. Disasters and accidents accounted for 7% of the airtime, as did crime, followed closely by health and medicine at 5%. All three of those subjects received more attention in the radio headlines than they did in the media over all in 2008.

Typical of the radio headlines news menu was this one from CBS on June 6, 2008, just a few days after the last primary voters had cast their ballots in the long Democratic nomination battle.

The top story was about the biggest monthly jump in unemployment figures in 22 years followed by a quick report on an off-the-beaten-path aspect of the economic crunch—roads and highways were in disrepair because of the skyrocketing costs of using oil-based asphalt. The next story was a brief recap at what the political world was buzzing about that day, a meeting between Obama and Clinton that spiked speculation about a possible vice-presidential slot for the former First Lady. Then came brief updates about storms and tornados in the Midwest and a drought that had spawned raging wildfires in North Carolina. Finally, there was a piece on efforts by anti-doping agencies to decide whether Viagra’s performance-enhancing qualities extended to bicycle races, thus necessitating a ban on the virility drug.

From the unemployment line to the medicine cabinet, the headlines offered a speedy spin around the day’s news cycle.

Top Broad Story Topics: News Radio Headlines vs. NPR vs. Media Over All
Percent of Newshole

News Radio Headlines		NPR Morning Edition		Media over all
Economics	19%	Foreign (Non-U.S.)	20%	Elections/Politics	34%
Elections/Politics	16	Elections/Politics	19	Economics	11
Disaster Accidents	7	Economics	12	Foreing (Non-U.S)	10
Foreign (Non-U.S.)	7	U.S. Foreign Affairs	9	U.S. Foreign Affairs	6
Crime	7	Business	4	Crime	5
U.S. Foreign Affairs	6	Lifestyle	4	Business	4
Business	6	Government	3	Government	4
Health/Medicine	5	Disasters/Accidents	3	Disasters/Accidents	4
Government	5	Crime	3	Health/Medicine	3
Lifestyle	3	Environment	3	Lifestyle	2

NPR’s Morning Edition Goes Big on Global

As part of its weekly News Coverage Index, PEJ studied about 130 hours of National Public Radio’s signature early news program, Morning Edition, in 2008. In terms of news priorities, the NPR component of radio news is far closer to the network radio headlines than the commercial talk format. But there are still some distinguishing features to the NPR news agenda, particularly when it comes to covering the world.

As NPR’s listening audience has grown by about 75% in the past decade, one of its perceived strengths has been international coverage at a time when many mainstream media organizations are shutting foreign bureaus. In 2008, the biggest component of Morning Edition coverage—30%—was devoted to news from overseas. That is nearly double the global coverage—17% of the newshole—in the media over all in 2008. And it even exceeds, slightly, the international coverage in the online media sector (27%), which has consistently devoted more attention to the rest of the world than the other four major platforms—cable news, network news, newspapers and the over all radio sector.

A further examination of that overseas coverage shows a significant tilt toward stories that did not directly involve the United States. While , coverage of non-U.S. stories accounted for 10% of the newshole in 2008 in the media over all, they accounted for 20% on Morning Edition. That 20% figure was nearly triple the attention (7%) the radio headline reports devoted to non-U.S. stories.

That international coverage ranged broadly, often going beneath the major narratives and top headlines. There was an offshoot-of-the-economic-meltdown narrative that looked at the impact of the financial crisis on Senegal, in Africa. There was a piece on rising tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Mideast after a conference of Islamic scholars in Mecca. And a somewhat prophetic account that ran before Russia rolled its tanks into Georgia examining Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s efforts to rebuild Russia’s degraded military forces.

At the same time, Morning Edition’s coverage of some of the more prominent and pressing international stories—such as the Iraq war (6% of the airtime studied), Pakistan (2%), China (2%) and Afghanistan (2%)—roughly doubled the amount of attention that the over all media paid to them.

Foreign Coverage: NPR’s Morning Edition vs. Media Over All

2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

NPR also featured slightly more coverage of the campaign and politics (19%) than the commercial radio news headlines (16%), but that total was still far below the political coverage (34%) in the media over all in 2008. In some other areas, NPR offered less coverage than the network headline reports, such as business and economics (16% compared with 25%), crime (3% compared with 7%), health and medicine (2% compared with 5%) and disasters and accidents (3% compared with 7%). In terms of quantity of coverage in those subject areas, NPR was not much different from the media over all in 2008. And the discrepancies here are more of a reflection of the headline reports’ niche of delivering a quick account of the day’s news.

Radio Differences in Format

Given its journalistic resources , Morning Edition had the largest over all component of interviews and pre-recorded story packages in the radio sector. The NPR program and commercial network headline reports were almost identical when it came to the percentage of airtime devoted to prepared story packages (59% to 57%). But 17% of the time on Morning Edition was filled by interviews compared with less than 1% on the headlines.

What the headlines lacked in interviews, however, they made up in staff voices on the air. About 41% of the headlines’ newshole was filled either by live staff reports or anchor reads, compared with 24% the NPR show.

Format of Radio News Story
Percent of Newshole

	NPR Morning Edition	News Radio Headlines	Talk Radio
Packaged Story	59%	57%	<1%
Interview	17	<1	11
Staff Live	15	24	<1
Anchor Read (Voice-over/Tell Story)	9	17	0
Live Event	1	2	<1
Talk Radio with Audio Clips	N/A	N/A	49
Talk Radio Without Audio Clips	N/A	N/A	39
Unedited Audio/Video	0	0	<1

For obvious reasons, the host-driven, commercial talk radio format is markedly different than either the headlines or Morning Edition and virtually none of the time is taken up by reported packages. There is, however, a significant difference in the percentage of airtime devoted to interviews depending on who is hosting the show. And again, it breaks down by ideology. The liberal talkers spent more than twice as much time doing interviews as their conservative counterparts, 17% to 7%.

A look at the individual hosts, at least in the part of the programs examined by PEJ, indicates that two of the talkers on different sides of the spectrum—the liberal Schultz and conservative Savage—do by far the most on-air chatting, with 24% of Schultz’s time take up with interviews compared with 17% for Savage. The two talkers who do, by far, the fewest two-way conversations in the time examined were Hannity (4%) and Limbaugh (3%). That reinforces the sense that Limbaugh is the star and centerpiece of his program. The liberal Rhodes was somewhere in the middle at 9%.

Footnotes

1. As currently licensed, satellite radio networks are restricted by the FCC from providing local content to specific targeted communities.

2. The story lasted 3 minutes and 23 seconds.

3. For the purposes of this overview, the Project used unpublished data pulled from BIAfn’s Media Access Pro 4.1 database. Station listings, which included primary format information, were generated for three markets—Houston-Galveston, Milwaukee-Racine, and Bend, Ore. Using the BIAfn data, station format histories were verified and then crosschecked and updated by using information listed on individual station Web sites and with Arbitron’s station information listings. Still, when compared to other radio formats, news is perhaps the most difficult to cleanly define. No precise formula and no real guidelines exist for determining whether a station is a news station, a news/talk station or a talk station.

It is also difficult to precisely determine issues like reception that may affect the radio station people might listen to as their ‘home town’ station. It is wholly possible that an individual in Houston or Milwaukee is able to receive the signal of a station from outside either city’s designated market-area.

4. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Estimates of the Population for Incorporated Places Over 100,000, Ranked by July 1, 2004. Population: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2004 , http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/tables/SUB-EST2004-01.xls

5. Coverage determined by using National Public Radio’s station coverage map.

6. The result was 11 1/2 hours of local news programming spread across 6 different stations. The specific stations were as follows: In Houston, KSEV (6-7 a.m. and 5-6 p.m.) and KTRH (6-7 a.m. and 1-2 p.m.); In Milwaukee, WTMJ (5-6 a.m. and 5-6 p.m.), WGTD (8-9 a.m. and 12-12:30 p.m.) and WHBL (6-7 a.m. and 11a.m.-12 p.m.); In Bend, KBND (6-7 a.m. and 5-6 p.m.)

7. The index measured the presence of ten different elements that a story might contain. They were the presence of: background information, future implications, the impact of the story on citizens, a human face to the story, some separation of fact and conjecture, potential action someone could take as a citizen, potential action to take as a consumer, contact information for the journalist or news outlet, the underlying principles at play, where to go for additional information.

Footnotes

1. As currently licensed, satellite radio networks are restricted by the FCC from providing local content to specific targeted communities.

2. The story lasted 3 minutes and 23 seconds.

5. Coverage determined by using National Public Radio’s station coverage map.

Ethnic Content

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

How did two major players in the ethnic media in America—the African American and Hispanic—cover the biggest story of the year, the presidential race? And how did that compare to the press generally?

To find the answers to these questions, PEJ took a snapshot of Spanish-language, African American and English-language print and television media in the days leading up to and immediately after the historic election, the first to elect a person of color to the White House.

Over all, the African American and Hispanic ethnic media studied by PEJ offered a heavier emphasis on the ins and outs of voting, the election as a watershed in U.S. history and in African-American television a clear sense of celebration. Among the findings:

Both Hispanic and African American media took how-to approach to their election reporting than did the mainstream outlets. In many cases the ethnic media acted as teachers, voter-advocate and even watchdogs. Indeed, both Spanish-language and African American newspapers devoted more than twice the space as English-language ones to explaining specifics on voting, such as necessary documents and when polls close.
In addition to voting specifics, these news outlets also focused on protecting their audiences’ right to vote, reporting possibilities for irregularities and what to do if a person is unable to vote. Very little of this existed anywhere in mainstream media’s election coverage.
African American print dedicated significant space – more than any other medium PEJ studied – to the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy and election. Almost a quarter of the election coverage studied was dedicated to the issue, twice that of mainstream newspapers.
African American broadcasts revealed more emotional, celebratory and casual reporting style that reflected what might be called cultural media rather than a strict journalistic approach.

These are some of the findings of a study of election coverage from October 30, 2008 to November 5, 2008. PEJ studied the top three Spanish-language and African American newspapers, El Diario/La Prensa, El Nuevo Herald, La Opinión, the New York Amsterdam News, the Philadelphia Tribune and the Afro-American. PEJ then compared the content of those papers to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

In order to get an accurate picture of the media coverage of the presidential election, PEJ studied all articles, columns and editorials in the front section of each newspaper, including opinion and editorial articles.

On the broadcast side, PEJ looked at the top Hispanic and African American television stations offering election coverage, Univision and the Black Entertainment Channel (BET).

Hispanic

The issue of Hispanics as a critical voting block was largely absent from English-language media during the campaign season. Yet, Hispanics in the end played a significant role. There was record spending on Hispanic media and real-time Spanish translations of debates for the first time online. And as it turned out, the Hispanic vote proved crucial to Barack Obama’s victory. Hispanic voters numbered between 9.6 million and 11 million, according to exit poll data.¹ And an additional survey reports that they voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of more than 2 to 1, or 67% to 31%.²

Did Spanish-language media cover this election differently than their English-language counterparts? In the final days of the campaign, at least, the answer seems to be yes.

Print

As PEJ found in its analysis of coverage of the 2007 immigration bill, Hispanic print coverage of the election had more in common with its English-language counterpart than did Hispanic broadcast outlets.

The difference that stood out most was in the relative prominence given to storylines such as the historic nature of the election, voting issues and daily events on the campaign trail.

Spanish-language newspapers focused much more on the historic aspects of Obama’s status as a mixed-race candidate than did mainstream newspapers. Fully 21% of its coverage focused on this theme, compared with 10% of coverage in English-language newspapers studied.

Top Election Storylines, Spanish-language vs. English-language Print

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

Many of the pieces also talked about how Hispanics felt deeply connected to the election of a minority to the highest office in the country and hoped it would lead to a breakthrough in race relations in America.

In a column entitled “More there than victory” Gerson Borrero in El Diario/La Prensa told the story of a white woman who had added Hussein to her name to show solidarity with Barack Obama after the candidate faced criticism for his Arabic middle name. The woman, whom he identified as Paula Hussein Campbell of New York City, said she saw the election as “a new beginning,” Borrero wrote. And her actions “formed part of the victory after years of racism and stereotypes that we never thought we’d see in our lives,” Borrero wrote. “That for sure gives us a victory far beyond electoral triumph.” ³

After the historic nature of election’s racial dynamic, the next most popular topic in Hispanic print media was coverage of voting issues, and in the Hispanic press this coverage was not only bigger than in the English-language papers, but it was also different in character.

Fully 20% of the Spanish-language print newshole was dedicated to voting issues vs. 14% in English-language newspapers.

And the stories were different in nature. Rather than reporting on the demographics, turnout predictions and analysis, as was the case in English-language print, more than half of the Hispanic voting coverage (11% of all voting stories) focused on familiarizing Hispanics with the voting process and potential irregularities. This coverage took a more “how to” approach to Election Day, including articles on the logistics of Election Day, such as what ID to bring and what to do if you are unable to vote. Other stories explained the Electoral College and examined reports of voting irregularities.

Voting Coverage Breakdown, Newspapers

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

On October 31, for example, La Opinión ran an article on page six entitled “Advice for Election Day,” that began with, “If you are voting for the first time in the United States this Tuesday, bring an identification document with you.” ⁴On November 4, El Nuevo Herald ran an article on the possibility of voting machine malfunctions due to high turnout on Election Day and El Diario/La Prensa reported that election authorities in New York and New Jersey would ensure everyone’s right to vote.

Beyond the mechanics of voting, the Hispanic media also paid close attention to the impact of the Hispanic vote. Coverage of the Hispanic vote accounted for 7% of election stories—the fourth-most common topic during the period studied (vs. 0.5% in the English language newspapers studied).

The extensive Spanish-language coverage differed in another way: a greater reliance on stories produced by wire news services such as the Associated Press. Well over half the stories were staff-produced (64%, including staff-produced opinion and editorial pieces) but more than a third came from wire services (35%). That is well above the percentage of wire stories on the topic in English-language papers (.5% wire). The remaining 1% was stories reprinted from other news outlets.⁵

Finally, Spanish-language newspapers covered the international interest and impact of the election more than their English-language counterparts. Nine percent of Spanish-language articles were internationally focused, twice that of English print articles (4%). This was just behind the 10% of international coverage Spanish-language broadcast produced.

On October 30, for example, Nuevo Herald reported the impact an Obama win could have on the embargo with Cuba. In another, the paper reported that many Cubans in the U.S. hope an Obama win would relax travel restrictions to the island. La Opinión also covered the celebration in Kenya over Obama’s election via a wire story.

Broadcast

If Spanish-language newspapers emphasized trying to help their readers vote, the Spanish broadcaster Univision considered that its main mission. The largest Spanish–language broadcaster in the U.S. dedicated 28% of its election newshole studied during that week to voting, more than three times than the English-language broadcasters (8%), and nearly eight percentage points more than Spanish language papers (20%). And most of this—more two-thirds of all this coverage--was devoted to the how-to elements of voting, the mechanics of helping audiences actually vote, or how to avoid being discouraged or stopped from voting.

Top Five Election Storylines, Univision

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

Consider the package run by Noticiero Univision on November 3 about how first-time voters and new citizens could ensure their right to vote. The story also reported on some irregularities in New Mexico and named various organizations ready to help Latinos having trouble exercising their vote. “It is estimated that in these elections, up to 2 million new Latino voters will exercise their right to vote,” anchor Maria Elena Salinas said. “A large part of them are new citizens of the United States, and for many, the electoral process represents a true challenge. During the last few weeks, we have offered you information about the electoral process that will help you vote… Today, we will inform you how to protect that vote.”.

Voting Coverage Breakdown, Univision vs. English-Language Broadcasters

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

After voting, the next three most common topic areas got equal treatment from Univision, at 7% each: the impact of the Hispanic vote, coverage of swing and red (Republican-leaning) states, and examinations of electoral map math. Two of the three were bigger topics here than in English-language TV. In the period PEJ studied, English-language broadcast did not cover the impact of the Hispanic vote at all and dedicated 5% of their election newshole to electoral map math. Swing and red states, however, got substantial coverage –12% of the election newshole.

And in a demonstration of a way in which Hispanic media are using technology to adapt to the shifting needs and demands of a changing audience, Univision dedicated a sizable portion (7%) of its election newshole to electoral map math. Maria Elena Salinas unveiled a new digital map to measure electoral votes by saying, “Sometimes, images count more than words, and in our electoral coverage, for the first time, we have a digital map that can help us visualize the presidential contest.”

There were also some differences in how Univision and the three commercial American broadcasters produced their election news. Univision invested more staff resources in edited packages and relied less on live interviews or brief anchor reads that are easier to produce.

International reactions and perspectives on the American presidential election was an uncommon topic across most media, but Univision dedicated a significant piece of its newshole to bringing viewers an international perspective. More than any other media source, regardless of ethnicity or sector, 10% of Univision’s election coverage had a significant international element. For comparison, only 2% of the English-language broadcaster’s newshole was dedicated to international coverage of the election during the time PEJ studied.

Geographic Focus of Election Coverage 2008

Univision vs. English-language broadcasters, October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

One story in particular that stood out was about a group of indigenous Shamans in Peru, who held a ritual on a beach in order to guess who the new American president would be. Another was a recap of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque addressing the United Nations, calling John McCain a “political dinosaur,” speaking on how an Obama victory might affect the embargo against Cuba, but ultimately affirming Cuba’s “impartiality” in the U.S. election.

Spanish-language broadcasters displayed none of the emotional during the period studied that we found during coverage of the immigration debate in Congress in 2007. HYPERLINK The coverage here, at least on Univision, was similar in tone and language to the major English-language broadcasters.

African American

African American media stood out as the most emotional in its campaign coverage and African American newspapers in particular acted as an election watchdog and advocate, urging African American voters to know and protect their rights and report irregularities.

Newspapers

In print, the biggest story line of all was the historic nature of the election given Obama’s status as the first person of color elected president. That storyline made up nearly a quarter of all the coverage during the period studied, 24.2%, compared with 10%in English language and 21% in Spanish.

Newspaper Coverage, Historic Nature of Obama Candidacy and Election

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

One particular angle here was a focus on elderly voters who never thought they would see the day they could vote for a black man for president. In its issue prior to election day, the New York Amsterdam News told the story of the Rev. Benjamin Wright, a 105-year-old Harlem man who enlisted the help of a state senator to cast his ballot and then broke into a song of celebration… “Last week, [State Senator] Perkins presented Wright with his ballot at his Harlem home, and the good reverend, in his Obama baseball cap, was visibly pleased. He expressed himself not just through conversation but also by belting out a song: the classic gospel song ‘Pilgrim of Sorrow.’ ” ⁶

Such emotion was easy to find throughout the African American coverage: “The world has been watching and will continue to watch, as a black man once more has been called on to salvage a country spiraling perilously out of control and in desperate need of a messenger of hope and promise,” a piece in the Amsterdam News said.

Voting issues were the second biggest storyline (16% of coverage) in African American newspapers, particularly possible voter fraud, irregularities and turnout issues. These issues filled 14% of the mainstream newspapers studied and 20%of Hispanic.⁷

Often these stories had the tone of a watchdog and advocate to African American voters, telling them to beware of certain voting issues and covering measures being taken by the presidential campaigns and organizations such as the NAACP to avoid voter fraud.

In the pre-election day publication, for example, the Amsterdam News ran an article, “Challenging Election Day Challenges,” which gave voters advice to come out early to avoid long lines, what voters should do if they are unable to find their name on the roll or if a voting machine breaks down. Similarly, the Philadelphia Tribune published “Keeping Voting Process Smooth and Painless.”

Voting Coverage Breakdown, Newspapers

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

Save for the top two stories – the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy and voting issues – the angles the African American press pursued varied considerably from English- and Spanish-language papers.

Top Five Election Storylines, African American Print

October 30-November 5, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ original content analysis

A topic that received considerably more attention in the black press than either the Hispanic or mainstream media was a reported foiled plot by white supremacists in Tennessee to assassinate Obama. This storyline accounted for 3.2% of African American print’s newshole in the days leading up to and after the election. Neither mainstream print nor Spanish-language print covered this story.

The reports were straight accounts of the arrests and crime, but the Afro American was particularly detailed in its description of the plan. The article read: “Cowart and Schlesselman are charged with possessing an illegal sawed-off shotgun, planning to steal weapons from a federally-licensed gun dealer and threatening a presidential candidate.” ⁸

It continued, “Court records state that the two were plotting a killing spree that was to include more than 80 murders of other African Americans before culminating with a potential suicide attack on Obama. They reportedly told investigators they planned to drive toward Obama at high speed while dressed in white tuxedoes and top hats and blasting with firearms from the windows of their vehicle.”⁹

Broadcast

Despite not having nightly news shows, BET and TV One, the two top-rated African American cable channels, did provide heavy news coverage of returns and events on election night. For this study, PEJ looked at the coverage on the top-rated network, BET, and compared it to the election night coverage of Univision, the top Spanish-language broadcaster, and the major English-language network news broadcasts.

What viewers found on BET was a substantially different news experience than elsewhere, one focused on providing a forum for voices of young voters and young African Americans wrapped up in an emotional and historic moment. The atmosphere was less formal and results-focused than Univision and the major networks’ coverage, and stood out among all media studied for its lack of technological wizardry. BET’s electoral map was on paper and hung in the studio.

BET’s election-night coverage began at 7 p.m. with the hosts of 106 & Park, a popular BET program, Terrence J. and Rocsi, decked out in VOTE T-shirts introducing rapper and hip-hop artist Q-Tip, who commented on the historic nature of the election. The hosts mixed the video countdown that typically marks their show with staff reports from Ohio and Atlanta and interviews with young African Americans who voted for the first time.

After 106 & Park, the coverage was turned over to Jeff Johnson, who served as the host for the night. From the beginning of the broadcast, it was clear that BET would assume the role of advocate and watchdog for African American voters at the polls. Johnson reported to the two hosts of 106 & Park: “You would not believe some of the tactics people are using to still try to get people out there to turn away. If you know somebody that’s at the polls and they’re in line you need to be their lifeline. Call them right now tell them to stay in line. Tell them don’t come home, they can’t get in the door, they can’t eat if they leave the lines.”

In a report from Spellman College in Atlanta, the historic nature and importance of the election to African American community was also evident. A student told an interviewer: “There are people who gave their lives for us to be able to vote. The least I can do is stand there and wait.”

Along with comprehensive coverage of results and returns, BET also broadcast staff reports from Phoenix, Ohio, Atlanta and Chicago. Johnson was joined for a good portion of the night by expert commentators and he mixed interviews with campaign officials and prominent African American political figures with reports from the field. The coverage included a series of town-hall like discussions on what Obama means for African American men and African American culture and how this election would affect America’s standing in the world.

Just after 11p.m., BET declared Obama the winner and the studio exploded with applause and cheering. Johnson intoned: “There is no way you can hear this news and in some way shape or form not be moved. As a journalist, I’ve been attempting to maintain composure and report this, but this is history, and this has changed the entire world. And if you have not been affected by this emotionally, not just as a person of color but as an American, then clearly you’re disconnected from humanity.”

Spanish-Language and African American Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Election: Methodology

Sample

For the daily newspapers and broadcasts, PEJ studied the period October 30-November 5, 2008. For the African American papers that do not publish daily, PEJ studied any issues available between October 30 and November 5. If there was no issue printed on November 5, PEJ studied the first issue published by the paper after Election Day. In print we studied the front sections of three Hispanic and African American papers — La Opinión, El Nuevo Herald El Diario-La Prensa, and the New York Amsterdam News, Philadelphia Tribune and Afro-American. PEJ compared these ethnic sources to three English-language papers — the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

In broadcast we studied the three English-language commercial television network evening newscasts and the PBS NewsHour, Spanish-language evening newscast on Univision and election night coverage on BET. It should be noted that BET does not have nightly news programming, so the only day PEJ looked at BET was on election night.

During this period all stories that were at least 50% about the presidential election or, after the election, about the new Obama administration were captured for analysis.

Story Capture

Five of the of the nine papers — the Amsterdam News, Philadelphia Tribune, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times — were collected by conducting a simple LexisNexis search, which allowed us to determine the placement of each story. Since El Diario-La Prensa, La Opinión, El Nuevo Herald and the Afro-American were unavailable on LexisNexis, hard copies of the papers were obtained through Pressdisplay.com, a Web service that provides exact digital copies of each newspaper, and all relevant articles were obtained. The exception to this was the Afro-American, which was not available in hard copy. In this case, PEJ captured the website and relevant articles each day (October 30-November 5) for the newspaper. PEJ collected and studied all stories on the presidential election appearing in the front section of each paper. The papers were selected based on circulation and geographic relevance to show the differences between different markets, since Hispanic and African American newspapers do not circulate nationally.

The broadcast stories were obtained by recording the Univision and BET broadcasts on the relevant dates using PEJ’s recording equipment. English-language broadcast stories were collected from PEJ’s news index archives, which contains daily network broadcast news programs. PEJ’s normal practice is to code only the first 30 minutes of a news broadcast if the program airs for over one hour, but in the case of all broadcast sources in English and Spanish, save for the evening PBS NewsHour, all programs air for 30 minutes. In the case of PBS, PEJ coded only the first half hour.

Coding Design

Once the stories were collected, PEJ used the content analysis method employing software designed to organize the stories according to specific variables. We selected several different variables that would allow us to measure each article quantitatively and qualitatively. For this project, the English-language stories had already been coded and identified in the News Index as being on the presidential election, and PEJ went back in the database and isolated those stories and combined them with the Spanish-language and African American stories in the database. The stories were categorized by:

program or publication
date
format
story describer
three main sources

The story describer serves the purpose of allowing us to quickly identify a story based on content and gives a brief description of the material covered in the article. The three main sources variable specifies where the reporters obtained their information from when they relied on an outside source. Quotes from politicians or activists, statistics from organizations and interviews with citizens all are considered sources.
The qualitative aspect of the project focused on examining the articles for tone, language use and any other similarities or differences found in both print and broadcast. The stories were compared to one another in their respective languages and mediums and were then compared in English and Spanish to draw comparisons.

All stories were coded in their original language.

Footnotes

1. Press release, “Latino Vote a New Force in Shaping the Election 2008 political Map,” National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), November 7, 2008. http://www.naleo.org/pr11-07-08.html

2. Mark Hugo Lopez. “The Hispanic Vote in 2008”. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, November 2008. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/98.pdf

3. Gerson Borrero. “Más allá de la Victoria.” El Diario/LaPrensa. November 5, 2008

4. Gabriel Lerner. “Consejos Para el Día del Voto.” La Opinión. October 31, 2008

5. The three Spanish-language newspapers were similar in their use of wire stories with El Nuevo Herald at the top (40%) followed by El Diario/La Prensa (33%) and La Opinión (32%)

6. Demetria Irwin. “105-Year Old Harlem Resident Votes for Obama.” New York Amsterdam News, October 30, 2008 Issue

7. Of the coverage of voting issues, stories on the mechanics of voting and irregularities made up 9.7% of the election newshole for African American print. Analysis of voter turnout and demographic shifts accounted for 4.8%. And stories on early voting made up 1.6%.

8. Dorothy Rowley. “Skinheads Ordered Held without Bond in Obama Assassination Plot.” Afro-American Online. November 1, 2008.

9. Dorothy Rowley. “Skinheads Ordered Held without Bond in Obama Assassination Plot.” Afro-American Online. November 1, 2008.

Magazines Content

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism

Introduction

The most basic data on news magazine content are derived from Hall’s Media Research, which analyzes magazines page by page to determine what topics are receiving coverage.

In previous years, the Hall’s data revealed that both Time and Newsweek had broadened and lightened the range of topics they covered. There was less focus on national government news and more of lifestyle topics. U.S. News & World Report, the outlier, had maintained a comparatively stronger orientation to traditional national, international and business news.

In 2008, however, that trend line changed. At Time and Newsweek the presidential election helped turn the focus firmly back to national affairs, at the expense of international, health and lifestyle coverage. U.S. News & World Report focused its editorial more on consumer-oriented features and stories on health and personal finance. The magazine greatly reduced its national and international affairs as well as its business news.

News Magazine Topics Over Time

1980-2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Hall's Media Research, unpublished data
Data for Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report

At Time, coverage of national affairs grew by nearly a quarter (8 percentage points) to 35% of all editorial space during the year. Moreover, that was 22 percentage points more than any other topic, and led, in turn, to declines in nearly everything else. International news fell by a nearly a fifth to 13% of editorial space, business by more than a third (to 5%) and culture news by a quarter to 10%.

The level of health coverage was basically unchanged in 2008.

At Newsweek, national affairs made up an even greater portion of the coverage, 39%. Business held at 7%, up a point, while health decreased nearly a third to 7%, and international news dipped by nearly a fifth to 11%.

One common denominator at both publications was a shift away from international coverage. (see News Investment.)

At U.S. News, the transitioning focus toward being a lifestyle guide led to a different profile—a boost in health and personal finance coverage at the expense of the hard news topics that once defined the magazine.

After offering more national and business news than its two main competitors for many years, U.S. News was now about on par with them in 2008. National news made 35% of the coverage (it was 36% in 2007); international news fell by nearly a third to 9%; business news was down slightly, to 8%, from 9% a year earlier.

News Magazine Topics, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Hall's Media Research, unpublished data

In their place, the magazine gave small boosts to several consumer-oriented topics. Health news increased 2 percentage points, to 14%, personal finance grew a point to 8% and cultural coverage edged up a point to 12%. Slighter increases were seen in the amount of news on entertainment, travel, leisure, sports, home and garden and fashion, food and beauty.

Newshole by Topic at Time, Newsweek, U.S. News

Topic	Time	Newsweek	U.S. News
	(%)	(%)	(%)
National Affairs	34.9	38.5	35.3
International News	13.3	10.6	8.9
Business	5.4	7.4	7.8
Health	5.5	6.8	12.1
Personal Finance	2.4	2.4	8.2
Electronics	1.4	1.4	0.7
Culture	9.9	11.7	13.8
Entertainment/Celebrity	11.0	9.1	0.7
Travel/Leisure/Sports	4.4	2.0	0.3
Home & Garden	0.2	0.1	0.1
Fashion/Food/Beauty	2.1	1.2	0.7
Children	0.6	0.4	0.3
General Interest	4.0	3.8	3.4
Miscellaneous	4.3	4.1	5.5

Source: Hall's Media Research, unpublished data

On the Covers

Another indicator of the content and personality of the news weeklies is how they sell themselves at the newsstand: their covers.

The cover pictures and text not only tell readers what is inside, but they also set a tone and evoke a personality.

Newsweek leaned more heavily on national and international affairs. Time addressed a broader range of topics, including health, education and volunteerism.

Comparisons with U.S. News & World Report here were more difficult, but also indicate the magazine’s direction. In July 2008, U.S. News transitioned to an every-other-week schedule and in 2009, cut back to monthly publication. U.S. News turned out fewer issues than Time or Newsweek, and yielded a much higher proportion of cover stories related to its topical focus — many on single topics, such as choosing a college — though not necessarily addressing news trends and events. For that reason, our cover analysis concerns only Time and Newsweek.

At Newsweek, 54% of the covers were about national affairs — 23 of those 27 about the election. At Time, 20 of 21 national affairs covers concerned the election.

Cover Story Topics in Time and Newsweek, 2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ research

Newsweek had slightly more covers on foreign affairs, seven, up from five in 2007. Time had five, up one from the previous year.

But the magazines’ approach to world affairs differed. Newsweek, at least in promise, took a more thematic view, with covers on diplomacy (“The Post-American World”), Barack Obama’s post-election challenges (“The Global Agenda”) a special year-end issue (“The New Global Elite”) and two covers on China, both featuring Chinese athletes, but whose stories mostly concerned the nation’s economic influence.

Time’s covers focused more on events, such as the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, the Russia-Georgia conflict and the war in Afghanistan.

The war in Iraq was almost entirely absent on both magazines’ covers in 2008, the exception being Newsweek’s cover story in April on young men from the Libyan town of Darnah who were recruited to be suicide bombers in Iraq. Each magazine also had one cover about the military.

The magazines each had five covers on the economy, two of them for each before the economic crisis in September.

Newsweek was more likely to features topics related to lifestyle (three). Time focused more on health (four covers), addressing such subjects as childhood vaccination, juvenile obesity and the state of healthcare in the U.S.

While both magazines each featured the environment twice, the approach differed. Newsweek’s angles were more political, one assessing which presidential candidate was “the greenest of them all” and the other, featuring a polar bear, dubbed “The Politics of Endangered Species.”

Both sets of covers, though, were consistent with a move toward more analysis. A reporter for the New York Times, Richard Perez-Peña, wrote of Time and Newsweek: “ They still produce some deep, original reporting. But these days, they are more likely to offer a comprehensive survey of a subject to present an argument or offer a prescription.”¹

Road to the White House

And which candidate for president appeared on the covers most?

In a runaway: Obama — 13 times in Time (10 prior to election) and 12 for Newsweek (9 pre-election).

In all, Time featured just four people associated with the campaign on its cover, Obama, John McCain (six times), Hillary Clinton (three) and Alaska Governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (once). In Clinton’s case, two of her three cover appearances were with Obama.

Newsweek spotlighted seven people: Obama 12 times, McCain 4, Palin 3, and Clinton 2. It seemed to go in rushes—Clinton and Obama in January, McCain twice in February, and Palin three times in September and October (plus a fourth mention, on a cover boldly entitled “What Women Want” on a commentary suggesting she be placed on the Supreme Court.)

Campaign Newsmaker Appearances on the Covers of Time and Newsweek, 2008

Campaign Newsmaker	Time	Newsweek
Barack Obama	13	12
John McCain	6	4
Joseph Biden	0	1
Sarah Palin	1	3
Hillary Clinton	3	2
Michelle Obama	0	2
Cindy McCain	0	1

Source: PEJ research

The New Yorker

Hall’s data also track one of what might be considered an alternative to the news weeklies, The New Yorker. As we have seen in past years, The New Yorker’s topic range stands in contrast to the traditional U.S. news weeklies.

As it has done during past elections, The New Yorker also stepped up its national affairs coverage in 2008. The amount of national news coverage, measured in editorial pages, nearly doubled, to 13%, up from 7% in 2007.

A pitched presidential primary battle between home-state Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was closely followed by the liberal magazine with its trademark commentaries, profiles, articles and Talk of the Town vignettes.

New Yorker Magazine Topics

1980-2008

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Hall's Media Research, unpublished data

But, while other magazines that cover the news reduced international reporting, the amount of foreign affairs coverage stayed remain basically unchanged (at about 7% of the newshole) at The New Yorker from 2007 to 2008. Coverage tilted toward Pakistan, with reporting from Steve Coll; Iran, with continued article by Seymour Hersh; and numerous other long-form pieces on China, Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan.

The magazine’s culture coverage, a staple of The New Yorker, fell in 2008 to 22%, from 26% in 2007. Similarly, coverage of arts and entertainment receded slightly, to 23%, from 24% in 2007.

More space for national affairs coverage could be one reason arts and culture coverage was down in 2008 compared with previous years. But as we have seen in past years, these shifts in topic range are more regular at The New Yorker than at Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

Footnotes

1. Perez-Peña, Richard, “The Popular Newsweekly Becomes a Lonely Category,” New York Times, January 17, 2009

Religion in the News

This report is a special segment of A Year in the News, an analysis of the mainstream media in 2008. It was written in collaboration with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The biggest single religion story of 2008 was compressed into about a week’s worth of coverage.

Attention to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States in April eclipsed even faith-related controversies surrounding the 2008 presidential election campaign, including candidates’ associations with controversial religious figures such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

For the year over all, religion coverage represented only a small slice of a mainstream news agenda dominated by politics and the economy. Nevertheless, religion received about as much coverage as immigration, education, and race- and gender-focused stories. In 2008, religion coverage filled 1% of the newshole – the time or space available in an outlet for news content – studied by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. (See Methodology.)

Selected Media Topics in 2008*

Topic of Coverage	% of Overall Newshole
Politics	29%
U.S. Economy	13%
Religion	1%
Immigration	1%
Education	1%
Race/Gender Issues	1%

*Note: In 2008, the Project for Excellence in Journalism studied some 69,942 stories from 48 different news outlets.

Beyond the pope’s visit and religion stories related to the presidential election, only a handful of other events had a significant religion focus: the release of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum (3% of the religion news hole); religion stories related to the 2008 holiday season (3%); a raid on a Texas compound associated with polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs (2%); the death of Mormon leader Gordon Hinckley (1%); and the Muslim terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India (1%).

Top Religion Stories in 2008

Story	% of Religion Newshole
Pope's U.S. Visit	37%
Presidential Election	21%
Pew Forum Survey	3%
Holiday Season	3%
Polygamist cCompound Raid	2%
Gordon Hinckley's Death	1%
Mumbai Terror Attacks	1%

But the biggest religion story of the year by far (making up 37% of the religion newshole) was Pope Benedict’s trip to the U.S during the week of April 14. The pope’s visit was the second-biggest news story in PEJ’s News Coverage Index during that week. (The presidential campaign topped the news agenda.) By the next week, however, the pope’s visit had practically disappeared from the headlines.

The pope’s trip was a highly anticipated event that included scheduled stops in Washington, D.C., and New York City, two major media markets. However, more than half (54%) of visit-related coverage focused on two sub-stories: the ongoing impact of the clergy sex-abuse scandal (37%) and the pope’s relationship with American Catholics (17%).

Pope Coverage by Story Focus

Media Coverage of April 2008 Visit

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Note: The "Straightforward Coverage of Events" story focus denotes straightforward coverage of events that had already occurred, most often papal appearances.

With the presidential campaign dominating all media coverage in 2008 (36% of the total newshole analyzed by PEJ for the year), one might expect that campaign-related religion stories would have eclipsed the pope’s visit. This was not the case, however. Much of the coverage of campaign-related events – including then-Sen. Barack Obama’s association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; the presidential candidates’ forum sponsored by evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren; and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s galvanization of “values” voters – focused on the “horse-race” aspects of the campaign rather than on the religion angles of the stories.

Religion Coverage in 2008 Over Time

Design Your Own Chart

Source: PEJ, A Year in the News, 2008

Two other religion stories that gained some traction in the press in 2008 were both tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: The death of Mormon leader Gordon Hinckley in January (1% of religion newshole) and the police raid on a Texas compound associated with fundamentalist sect leader Warren Jeffs (2%).

Religious conflict around the world received sporadic attention from the press (combined, these stories filled 3% of the religion newshole). Two of the biggest events – the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, and ongoing cultural unrest in Iraq – centered on religion-related violence. Religious conflict also was a storyline in coverage of religious freedom issues in Russia under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Were there any unifying themes to the mainstream press coverage of religious issues in 2008?

Throughout much of 2008, the media generally seemed to follow two patterns in its coverage of religion. First, religion reporting was often episodic, clustering intensely around big events such as the pope’s visit and religion stories related to the 2008 holiday season. Religion stories also faded quickly from the headlines.

Second, the angle of religion coverage frequently gravitated toward controversies, such as Barack Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright and stories about the clergy sex abuse scandal that surfaced during the pope’s visit. This was particularly problematic for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, who were inundated with questions concerning their faith.

	News Interest index		News Coverage Index
NII Rank	Story	% Following Very Closely	Story	% of Newshole	Week of
1	Conditions of U.S. Economy	70%	Financial Crisis	40%	9/22-28
2	Rising Price of Gasoline	66	Gas/Oil Prices	4	6/2-8
3	Debate Over Wall Street Bailout	62	Financial Crisis	45	9/29-10/5
4	2008 Presidential Election	61	2008 Presidential Campaign	51	10/13-19
5	Major Drop in U.S. Stock Market	59	Financial Crisis	36	10/6-12
6	Falling Price of Gasoline	53	Gas/Oil Prices	1	10/13-19
7	Hurrican Ike	50	Hurricane Ike	14	9/8-14
8	Wall Street Financial Crisis	49	Financial Crisis	37	9/15-21
9	Obama Transistion	49	New Obama Administration	23	11/17-23
10	2008 Primary Election	44	2008 Presidential Campaign	40	2/11-17
11	Hurricane Gustav	42	Hurricane Gustav	17	9/1-7
12	Debate Over Auto Bailout	41	U.S. Auto Industry	15	11/17-23
13	Risign Unemployment	40	Financial Crisis	20	12/1-7
14	Floods in the Midwest	39	Midwest Flooding	16	6/16-22
15	Beijing Olympic Games	35	2008 Olympics	10	8/18-24

1	Blagojevich Scandal
2	Warren Jeffs Trial and Texas Raid
3	Spitzer Scandal
4	Caylee Anthony Case
5	Madoff Investment Scam
6	Maria Lauterbach Murder Case
7	Baseball Steroids Scandal
8	Northern Illinois University Shooting
9	Anthrax Case, Suspect Suicide
10	Detroit Mayork Kilpatrick Charges

		# of stories	% of stories
1	Barack Obama	6904	10%
2	John McCAin	3704	5
3	Hillary Clinton	2719	4
4	George Bush	1284	2
5	Sarah Palin	921	1
6	Rod Blagojevich	290	<1
7	Bill Clinton	274	<1
8	Mitt Romney	258	<1
9	Edward Kennedy	247	<1
10	John Edwards	201	<1
11	Mike Huckabee	200	<1
12	Eliot Spitzer	186	<1
13	Joseph Biden	180	<1
14	Ted Stevens	173	<1
15	General Motors	163	<1
16	Pope Benedict	160	<1
17	Michelle Obama	142	<1
18	Jeremiah Wright Jr.	123	<1
19	Scott McClellan	121	<1
20	Condoleeza Rice	119	<1