The agenda of the mainstream news media in America became more diverse in 2009.
Most likely this was a reflection of events rather than a structural change in mostly shrinking newsrooms toward a broader range of beats and interests.
Absent in the year just past was the historic election that swallowed up more than a third (36%) of the newshole and a good deal of newsroom resources in 2008. Instead, 2009 was marked by a dizzying array of news events that caused even a depleted news media universe to pay attention — a new president, the worst recession since the 1930s, record federal spending to stimulate the economy, a federal bailout of the U.S. financial system and the American car industry, a bitter fight over health care, a new populist conservative uprising in response to all that, an escalating war in Afghanistan and violent political rumbling in Iran.
We also found, once again, a heavy Washington angle to the news agenda. Coverage of the economy, for instance, exploded in February and March of 2009 and dissipated later as the center of gravity moved from D.C. debates to local jobs and businesses and home prices. When that happened, Washington began to fade somewhat from the national news media.
The same thing happened with coverage of Afghanistan (as it did Iraq in 2007). In the year in which the news media finally started paying attention to the war in that country, the driving storyline was President Obama’s White-House-based review of strategy for that war. But compared with the Washington political and policy debate over Afghanistan, the events in that country themselves, even including a disputed national election tarnished by allegations of corruption, were a much smaller part of the story.
Among Our Findings:
- One sign of a more balanced news agenda in 2009 is that the top 10 stories of the year, ranging from the economic crisis to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, filled 50% of the newshole studied by PEJ. In 2008 just two stories, the presidential race and the economy, took up half the coverage on their own.
- The top story of 2009, the economy, filled 20% of the newshole, but it followed a volatile trajectory. In the first quarter of the year, the grave recession accounted for 37% of all the coverage, a level reminiscent of the presidential election a year earlier. But in the second quarter, that number dropped to 18%, and in the summer it fell off further as the health care debate supplanted the economy as the more newsworthy Washington political battle.
- The second half of the year the health care debate was the top story, but news media attention to it was particularly intense in August and September, when the subject accounted for 19% of the newshole studied. Fueled by politics, passion and protests, it became the province of talk shows on cable television and talk radio. In the peak month of August, when the protests erupted, the ideological talkers devoted 60% of their airtime to the raging and angry health care debate.
- Afghanistan finally emerged as a major story in 2009, after years on the news media back burner. It received five times the coverage it had in 2007 and 2008, and more than doubled the coverage of Iraq during the year. Much of that occurred in the second half of the year as the U.S. strategy review of the war there moved into high gear. That said, as the Obama administration began its own version of a surge policy in Afghanistan, the situation there generated only about one-third the attention that the war in Iraq garnered in 2007 (16%) when President George W. Bush announced his surge in that country.
- The new president was easily the dominant newsmaker in 2009, appearing as a lead newsmaker (registering in at least 50% of a story) 10 times more often than the next person in the news. In a year full of public policy battles, however, the No. 2 newsmaker was neither a politician nor a public official, but a deceased celebrity, King of Pop Michael Jackson. And in a sign of her continuing ability to generate headlines, the lead Republican newsmaker was former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
- The list of subjects that received only minimal attention was also noteworthy. The environment was fairly low on the list of what got covered, 16th out of the 26 general topics in the news. Science and technology were 20th, education 22nd and immigration 24th. Development and sprawl were last.
- A separate analysis of social media and blogs throughout the year found that the stories and issues getting the most attention there differed substantially from the mainstream press. Blogs and the mainstream press shared the same top story just 13 weeks (out of 47 studied). But the sources for these discussions were still largely tied to legacy news. Three outlets alone provided 65% of the stories bloggers linked to – the New York Times, CNN and the BBC. On Twitter, the subjects discussed were even less likely to match up with the mainstream press and the sources drawn upon were less traditional. American newspapers, for instance, accounted for just 3% of all news links there.
These are a few of the findings of an examination of PEJ’s comprehensive content analysis of the news media. That analysis includes a study of more than 68,000 stories through the year from 55 mainstream news outlets that make up our News Coverage Index. The Index identifies the amount of coverage (time on radio and television and space online and in print) devoted to different major stories and general topic categories. We also analyze major newsmakers, the geographic focus of the news and more.
In addition, PEJ launched in 2009 a New Media Index that monitors online social media including blogs, Twitter, and YouTube.
This year, we have added to Year in the News a new online utility that allows users to analyze this data for themselves. What follows is our assessment of that data, but you can click here to analyze it for yourself.
A More Diverse News Agenda
By the numbers, more major stories shared the top of the news agenda in 2009 than in any of the three years since PEJ began tracking the agenda-setting of the American press. We do not believe this reflects a broader commitment to the news, or more capacity in newsrooms to cover more things. Nor, a close look at the data suggests, does it reflect a more diverse or heterogeneous media culture, despite a proliferation of outlets. More likely, it reflects the incredible urgency of events — a new president, an economic crisis, a health care donnybrook, a dramatically expanding war in Afghanistan, internal turmoil in Iran, the flu pandemic. While many critics might quarrel with the quality of coverage each of these subjects received, there was more coverage of more things in 2009 than in recent years.
Top Broad Topics: 2008 vs. 2009
|
2008 |
|
2009 |
Elections/politics |
34% |
U.S. Foreign Affairs |
11% |
Economics |
11 |
Health/Medicine |
11 |
Foreign (non-U.S.) |
10 |
Government |
10 |
U.S. Foreign Affairs |
6 |
Economics |
10 |
Crime |
5 |
Foreign (non-U.S.) |
10 |
Disasters/Accidents |
4 |
Elections/Politics |
5 |
Health/Medicine |
3 |
Domestic Terrorism |
3 |
Lifestyle |
2 |
U.S. Miscellaneous |
3 |
In 2009, coverage of the economic recession and the health care debate topped the news agenda, accounting for a combined 29% of the newshole. (That’s in line with 2007 when Iraq and the evolving presidential campaign combined for 26%, but very different from 2008 when the election and economy accounted for half the overall coverage.)
After the economy and health care, however, there were six other stories that accounted for 2% of newshole or more in 2009. They were the new Obama administration (5%), Afghanistan (5%), U.S. efforts to combat terrorism (4%), Iran (2%), the swine flu outbreak (2%) and the Iraq war (2%).
In contrast, in 2008, only one story other than the election and economy accounted for more than 2% of the newshole, and that was Iraq (4%).
Stories Needed to Fill 50% of the Newshole
|
Percent of newshole 2008 |
|
Percent of Newshole, 2009 |
Election |
35% |
Economy |
20% |
Economy |
15 |
Health Care |
9 |
|
|
Obama Administration |
5 |
|
|
Afghanistan |
5 |
|
|
Domestic Terrorism |
4 |
|
|
Iran |
2 |
|
|
Swine Flu |
2 |
|
|
Iraq War |
2 |
|
|
Michael Jackson Dies |
1 |
|
|
Sonia Sotomayor |
1 |
This diversity is also evident if you look at the list not of big stories but of the dispersion of the 26 general topics PEJ has identified that make up the news agenda. This list, such things as stories about government generally, celebrity or education, accounts for every story during the year, not just those that are part of a big event or running story. Measured by general topic categories, five overall subjects received 10% or more of the newshole studied during the year. In order, they were foreign events that directly involved the United States, followed by health and medicine, government, the economy and foreign events in which the U.S. was not directly involved.
Top Story Topics in 2009: Media Over All
U.S. Foreign Affairs |
11% |
Health/Medicine |
11 |
Government |
10 |
Economics |
10 |
Foreign (Non-U.S.) |
10 |
Business |
7 |
Crime |
6 |
Elections/Politics |
5 |
Domestic Terrorism |
3 |
U.S. Miscellaneous |
3 |
Lifestyle |
3 |
Additional Domestic Affairs |
2 |
Sports |
2 |
Defense/Military (Domestic) |
2 |
Celebrity/Entertainment |
2 |
Environment |
2 |
Media |
2 |
| Disasters/Accidents |
2 |
Race/Gender/Gay Issues |
2 |
Science/Technology |
2 |
Court/Legal System |
1 |
Education |
1 |
Transportation |
1 |
Immigration |
<1 |
Religion |
<1 |
Development/Sprawl |
<1 |
The shifts in topics were interesting. Elections/politics, which filled 34% in 2008, fell to 5%. Health and medicine jumped to 11% from 3%. Government news climbed to 10% from 4% in an election year. Business climbed to 7% from 4%.
The Economy Tops the News Agenda
The state of the U.S. economy was the biggest story of the year. It filled 20% of the time on television and radio studied and space online and in print. That number was up from 15% the previous year, but coverage accelerated sharply in the final months of 2008, after the mid-September collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Coverage of the economy in 2009 reinforced two things we have seen consistently about the modern news media culture, which is made up of more outlets, but each one with smaller newsgathering resources, as well as some major destinations such as Yahoo and Google or MSNBC that are largely aggregating or editing copy from others.
The first is a tendency to flood the zone with intense coverage that isn’t sustained. The economy accounted for a stunning 45% of the newshole in February and 44% in March. It then plunged by more than half in April (to 20%) and did not exceed 16% of the newshole in any month after June.
What happened to make the economy subside as a story? First, the news got less grim. A worsening economy was a much bigger story than one that seemed to be bottoming out and beginning to improve. Second, the story got less centralized as it moved from Wall Street and Washington onto Main Street. Third, as that happened, another political fight replaced it: the health care debate became the No. 1 topic.
Once the political debate shifted from stimulus and auto bailouts to health care, coverage levels of the economy story were quite consistent in the last nine months of the year—20% in April, 19% in May, 16% in June, 15% in July, 15% in August, 10% in September, 13% in October, 14% in November, 14% in December.
Economy and Health Care Coverage Over Time, 2009
Within the larger story of the economy, two subthemes stood out in 2009. The federal bailout and financial sector was No. 1 (at 17% of all the economy coverage), the stimulus was No. 2 (at 14%). And jobs, housing, and effect on average Americans accounted for 9%, 6%, and 5% of the economy coverage respectively.
Coverage of the stimulus battle overwhelmed the news agenda in February, when the bill was signed after a pitched political fight. By and large, coverage of the troubled financial sector — including everything from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the condition of America’s banks to executive bonuses — remained consistently prominent. The jobs picture, a narrative often driven by the national employment rate, which passed the psychologically pivotal 10% mark in November, emerged as a significant storyline from time to time.
Unlike some stories, there were not huge differences in the amount of coverage of the economy among different media sectors — 17% in cable, 18% in network (with PBS), 18% in radio and 21% online.
The only media sector in which the economy was a notably bigger story was in newspapers, where it filled 25% of the coverage that began on the front page. And it was an even bigger story at smaller local papers (those with circulations under 100,000), which devoted 31% of their front-page newshole to the economy and pursued the macro story on a more grassroots, community level.
Health Care: A Talk Show, Particularly a Liberal Talk Show Story
Health care was the second-most-covered story of the year. It filled 9% of the newshole, half that of the economy. But that number is slightly deceptive.
The health care battle became a major story in July, jumping from 6% of the newshole in June to 14% in July, and became particularly hot and passionate in August, when it filled 21% of the newshole. It gradually declined after that, although it remained the No. 1 story in September (18%), October (14%), and December (15%). Although coverage diminished in the fall, from July through the end of the year over all, health care filled 15%, topping all other stories.
A fair amount of this was fueled by the growing talk show culture. And liberal talkers such as Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow were among the most vocal. Over all, health care accounted for 14% of the radio newshole and 13% of the cable TV newshole for the year, compared with 6% on network, 5% online and 7% in newspapers. From July to the end of the year, in particular, the talk shows on cable and radio devoted more than twice (35%) of their coverage to the subject than did the media over all (15%). In August alone, when the story peaked amid protests, the talk hosts devoted an extraordinary 60% of their airtime to the subject.
Health Care Coverage Over Time: Talk Shows vs. Media Over All
Indeed, on evening cable news for the year, health care was as big a story for the year as the economy (15%) and it was driven in part by the coverage on MSNBC. There, health care accounted for 20% of the newshole (24% in evening), on Fox it was 11% of the newshole (12% at night) and on CNN, it was 8% over all (9% on CNN prime time.)
On talk radio, the topic was even bigger — 21%, compared with 16% for the economy. It was an extraordinary 31% of the airtime studied on liberal talk radio compared with 14% for conservative talk radio.
The Year of Afghanistan (Finally)
Afghanistan was the fourth-biggest story of the year, making up 5% of the newshole studied in 2009. That quintupled its total from in 2007 and 2008.
It is now America’s war in the eyes of the media. It generated more than twice as much coverage in 2009 as Iraq (2%).
Afghanistan Coverage Over Time
2007 - 2009
This shift in the media story selection was largely Obama’s doing, the data suggest, as this was very much a Washington war story — and it followed his creation of the “Af-Pak” paradigm linking Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as his drawn-out policy deliberations over Afghanistan strategy that became a political issue themselves.
In the first half of the year, Afghanistan accounted for about 2% of the newshole as the president made it clear that the war, unlike Iraq, was a major strategic priority for his administration. But coverage really did not kick into high gear until late summer. The week of Afghan elections in late August, the topic accounted for 10% of the newshole, its single biggest week of coverage to that point. From then, it took off. In the last five months of the year, it was the No. 3 story at 8% of the newshole, trailing only health care and the economy.
What was driving the change wasn’t coverage of events inside Afghanistan, but instead the Obama administration’s months-long policy review that culminated with the early December “surge” announcement of 30,000 more troops.
The breakdown of subthemes within the Afghanistan coverage is telling. For the year, 46% of the Afghanistan coverage was devoted to the U.S. policy debate compared with only 14% to the actual combat in the country; just 9% concerned the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and a good chunk of the last category was taken up by the disputed Afghan elections.
These findings reinforce the idea of Washington-centric coverage of war in the current media environment. In 2007, the U.S. policy debate also accounted for about half the coverage of the Iraq war – 8% out of a total Iraq newshole of 16% — so it followed the same pattern. If anything, coverage of Afghanistan in 2009 might have been slightly more Washington-centric than Iraq coverage in 2007.
Interestingly, coverage of Afghanistan was very balanced among the five media sectors—ranging from 4% to 5% of the newshole in each.
How was Obama covered?
And how did the press cover the new President?
Over all, the new administration was the No. 3 story, at 5% of the newshole.
The coverage was front-loaded early in the year. It was the top story in January (25%), the month of the inauguration and changeover in the White House, and No. 2 in February (8%). It dropped to 4% in March, rose slightly to 5% in April, and never exceeded 4% in any month for the rest of the year. But it is important to remember that before Obama was inaugurated, the Obama administration big story was a kind of catch-all for almost anything about the new president-in-waiting, so the numbers are inflated by the January count.
Top Obama Administration Storylines
Of the coverage of Obama, 26% was about his leadership and ideology, a good chunk of which tended to be partisan and ideological; 23% was about his cabinet selections and key appointments; 12% was devoted to one single event, his inauguration; and 8% was devoted to his handling of the economy. Those were the top sub-stories.
In a study released in 2009, PEJ found that coverage of Obama’s first 60 days in office differed markedly from that of his two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Not only was Obama’s early coverage notably more positive than Bush’s and Clinton’s (something that evolved as Obama’s job ratings fell during the year), but it also focused far more on his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for presidents No. 42 and 43.
How much did things like Obama’s race, unsubstantiated rumors about his religion and citizenship play into coverage of his administration? On the face of it, not much. His race and questions about religion/citizenship combined for 4% of the Obama administration coverage, which is the same amount (4%) devoted to the family acquiring a new dog and the Obama administration’s conflict with Fox News. But that doesn’t quite tell the whole story.
There were other topics and events, outside of direct coverage of the Obama administration itself, however, that also raised the matter of the president’s race. For two weeks starting in late July, the fallout from the arrest of the black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. by a white police officer in Cambridge was a major topic in the media. And the subject of race — including the president’s — became a significant issue when he injected himself into the controversy by first asserting that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” and then trying to tamp down passions by hosting a “beer summit” at the White House between Gates and the arresting officer.
And for a week in mid-September, the news media devoted considerable time and space to examining whether fervent opposition to Obama’s policies had a racial component — a storyline driven in part by Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst during Obama’s September 9 health care speech to Congress and by a statement from former President Jimmy Carter citing race as motivating some of the political anger aimed at Obama.
During the 2008 election, Obama’s religion, particularly whether he was a secret Muslim and his relationship with a controversial pastor in Chicago, was a major story. He also was unusual for a Democrat in how much he talked about his religion, and his willingness to carry on some of President’s George W. Bush’s faith-based policies. How much attention did the religious aspect of the president get?
Only a small fraction of Obama’s overall coverage was specifically about religion—a topic that generally does not get substantial media coverage. But even so, he was the year’s second-biggest “religion” newsmaker behind the pope.
Most of the religion stories about Obama were about the inauguration ceremonies — the Rev. Rick Warren and Bishop Gene Robinson giving prayers and who that offended. Also, his faith-based initiative made a bit of news. Other Obama religion stories came from speeches he gave. One was in Turkey, where he said the U.S. was not necessarily a Christian nation. The other was his invitation to speak at Notre Dame, which angered some Catholic bishops because of Obama’s support for abortion rights. There was hardly a mention in the religion coverage about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, where the Obama family would be going to church during his presidency, or President Obama’s own personal spirituality.
Some of the coverage concerning Obama’s religion fell into the category of talk show speculation based on those religious figures who spoke at the inauguration and some of his early decisions on faith-based efforts. That is in keeping with the idea that coverage of the Obama administration in general was most extensive in cable and radio (7%), the two sectors populated by ideological talk shows.
When it came to cable and talk radio, there was a little bit of a reverse effect from what we saw with health care. Here, conservatives were more interested in the subject of the Obama administration, particularly on talk radio where right-wing talkers devoted 12% of their airtime to the story compared with 6% for left-wing talkers. In cable, Fox was modestly more interested at 8%, compared with 7% on MSNBC and 6% on CNN.
The Michael Jackson Phenomenon
Amid two wars, a recession and renewed political passions, Michael Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009, was in a class by itself as a celebrity/entertainment news story.
The story was driven not only by the magnitude of Jackson’s fame, but also by some the same other factors that had made the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith a big story in 2007 — namely a criminal investigation into the death and a custody/probate battle.
By any measure, the Jackson numbers are impressive. The No. 9 story of the year, it accounted for 1% of the newshole, just barely behind the Iraq war (2%) and barely ahead of the historic nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court (1%). And during its peak in the summer, the Jackson story attracted major coverage.
Indeed, it remained big for fully two months. It was the No. 3 story in June (6%) and the No. 3 story in July (8%). The week he died (June 22-28), the story accounted for 18% of the newshole, followed by 17% the week of June 29-July 5; and another 17% the week of July 6-12 (his memorial service).
Coverage was driven by the same two media platforms that drove the Anna Nicole Smith story — cable TV news (2%) and morning network TV (4%). And on cable, it was largely a CNN story (3%). That was different from Anna Nicole Smith, for whom Fox gave it the most coverage and CNN the least on cable news.
The Jackson story is also a primary reason why we saw a spike in the broad topic of celebrity/entertainment to 2% in 2009, up from less than 1% in 2008.
Indeed, over all, Jackson was the No. 2 newsmaker during the year when measured by the standard of lead newsmaker, which catalogues how often someone or something shows up in at least 50% of a story.
Foreign vs. Domestic Coverage
This increased coverage of Afghanistan, particularly the U.S. policy debate aspect, is responsible for a modest uptick in overall foreign news, to about 26% in 2009 from about 21% in 2008. There are two basic components of international coverage measured by PEJ. One is when the United States is a significant actor with a direct involvement in the situation. The other involves global events that are not directly related to the U.S.
Coverage of foreign events not directly involving the U.S. remained at basically the same level (10% of the newshole) in 2009 as it was in 2008. But coverage of foreign news involving the U.S. grew to 16% of the newshole, up from 11% in 2008, and much of that increase related to the uptick in coverage of the war in Afghanistan.
There were a few notable shifts in global hotspot coverage in 2009. Coverage of Iran jumped to 2% from 1% in 2008, largely because of the election there and protests over the outcome. Iraq continued to fall down the media priority list, down to 2% in 2009 from 4% in 2008.
On the domestic side, one topic that grew noticeably in 2009 was the U.S. campaign against terrorism, up to 4% of the newshole from 1% a year earlier. That coverage spiked after the April release of memos documenting Bush-era interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, of terror suspects, which triggered a major political debate.
One major policy issue that seems to generate only modest coverage in the mainstream media is the environment. In 2009, coverage of that topic was at 2%, virtually the same level the subject generated in 2008 and 2007. And a primary reason that coverage even reached the 2% mark in 2009 was a big month of December, when coverage accounted for 4% of the newshole, thanks largely to the Copenhagen summit meeting and the flap over the leaked e-mails concerning global warming. This seems to be another subject that the news media ignore until there is either a signature official event (Copenhagen) or an ideological/political controversy such as the global warming argument that was seized on by skeptics and their allies in the conservative press.
Another potentially potent issue virtually vanished from the news agenda in 2009. This was immigration, which was not one of President Obama’s legislative priorities in his first year and accounted for less than 1% of the newshole. That was down modestly from 1% in 2008 and 3% in 2007, when the issue exploded that spring during the unsuccessful attempt to pass immigration legislation.
Symbolically, at a time when immigration coverage was down, CNN’s Lou Dobbs — the TV host most closely associated with that issue and a staunch advocate of tougher enforcement — left that channel and the cable TV airwaves late in 2009.
Newsmakers of the Year
Who were the top newsmakers of the year? PEJ has a high standard for this. We measure when a newsmaker dominates a story or when half the story mentions someone. By that strict standard, President Obama was in a class by himself, a lead newsmaker in 11% of all the nearly 70,000 stories studied. Not surprisingly, he was the biggest lead newsmaker in the chattering world of cable, where he figured in at least half of 15% of the 2009 cable stories.
Lead Newsmakers in 2009
| |
Number of Stories |
Percent of Stories |
Barack Obama* |
7,756 |
11.3% |
Michael Jackson |
729 |
1.1% |
Sonia Sotomayor |
552 |
0.8% |
Hillary Clinton |
492 |
0.7% |
Sarah Palin |
424 |
0.6% |
Bernard Madoff |
363 |
0.5% |
Edward "Ted" M. Kennedy |
338 |
0.5% |
Timothy Geithner |
283 |
0.4% |
Dick Cheney |
262 |
0.4% |
Nidal Malik Hasan |
253 |
0.4% |
Roland Burris |
249 |
0.4% |
Rod Blagojevich |
223 |
0.3% |
Bush and Bush Administration† |
216 |
0.3% |
Nancy Pelosi |
213 |
0.3% |
Tiger Woods |
207 |
0.3% |
Mark Sanford |
203 |
0.3% |
Ben Bernanke |
200 |
0.3% |
Michelle Obama |
197 |
0.3% |
Robert Gibbs |
195 |
0.3% |
Rush Limbaugh |
181 |
0.3% |
* Includes Barack Obama and the Obama administration as lead newsmaker
† Includes George W. Bush and Bush Administration as lead newsmaker
All that meant that the president was tenfold ahead of the No. 2 lead newsmaker, Michael Jackson. From his death on June 25 through July 12, Jackson was the No. 1 lead newsmaker for three weeks in a row, even exceeding the president in that category.
The third-, fourth- and fifth-leading newsmakers were women. The first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, whose nomination triggered a discussion of race and ethnicity, was the No. 3 lead newsmaker, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Palin, who made news by resigning as governor of Alaska in July, was the top Republican among lead newsmakers. She was followed in the No. 6 spot by the year’s most notorious criminal, convicted Ponzi scheme swindler Bernard Madoff. In 2008, the sixth spot went to another person accused of a white-collar crime, the ousted and indicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who will go on trial in 2010 on charges related to what the prosecutors say was an attempt to sell the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama. In 2009, Blagojevich slipped to the 12th position but still managed to remain in the headlines.
One of the people on the Top 10 list in 2009 seemed to make more news after leaving the corridors of power. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who became a vocal critic of Obama’s national security policies, was No. 9 on the lead newsmaker list in 2009. In 2008, however, when he held the bully pulpit attached to the vice presidency in the land, Cheney did not even make the list of top 20 newsmakers.
Indeed, in 2009, Cheney made more news than his former boss, President George W. Bush, who finished 13th on the list.
Two members of 2009’s Top 20 newsmaker list found themselves enmeshed in highly publicized marital scandals. Golfing and marketing superstar Tiger Woods, whose Thanksgiving car crash unraveled allegations of infidelity, was No. 15 followed immediately by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whose affair with an Argentine woman led to the breakup of his marriage and put a serious dent in any ambitions he might have had for higher office.
