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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Health Care and Fort Hood Stir Passions
For the second week in a row, the fallout from the Nov. 5 Fort Hood shooting was a major topic in the blogosphere. But it had to compete with the health care bill in the House, which triggered opposition from conservative commentators and mixed feelings from liberal bloggers upset about an amendment that prohibited federal funding for abortions.
For the week of Nov. 9-13, 22% of the links in blogs and social media were to news-related stories about health care reform according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. This marks only the second time since the NMI began in January 2009 that the health care debate was the No. 1 topic in the blogosphere and social media. The first occurred during the week of Aug. 10-14 (23% of the links) when supporters and opponents of President Obama's health care goals traded accusations of deception and dishonesty.
Drawing almost as much attention, 20% of the links, was the Fort Hood attack. Attention here focused on the accused shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The tone and tenor of the online conversation in many ways mirrored that of talk radio and cable television last week. In both the new media and the talk media in mainstream press, the case had become something of a cultural and ideological wedge issue. Many bloggers were eager to proclaim the attack as part of an Islamic jihad against the U.S. and accused those less willing to do so of dangerously downplaying terrorism.
The online conversation about Hasan was also informed by a Washington Post link that displayed dozens of the slides he used during a 2007 presentation about Islam he delivered to senior Army doctors at Walter Reed Hospital. The interactive nature of the Web allowed users to see and comment on direct evidence rather than solely relying on the interpretations of others.
It was a week too when the new media and the old were closely matched. The top two subjects for bloggers were also widely covered in the mainstream press. Fort Hood was the No. 1 story (at 20% of the week's newshole) and health care was the third biggest (at 11%), according to PEJ's News Coverage Index, which monitors 55 key mainstream media outlets from print, cable, network, radio and major online news sites.
The No. 3 story in the blogosphere last week was the latest chapter in a seven-year-old crime saga. A CNN report about the Nov. 10 execution of John Allen Muhammad, the so-called "D.C. Sniper" involved in shootings that killed 10 people in 2002, received 11% of the links.
Another CNN report about Danish researchers who discovered that a golf ball will take between 100 and 1,000 years to decompose naturally was fourth, at 10% of the links. And a report on CNN.com about the surprise departure of prime-time host Lou Dobbs was fifth, at 8% of blog links. Reaction to Dobbs' departure varied. Some bloggers were glad the controversial host was leaving; others hoped he would find a way to advocate for the issues he had focused on such as immigration.
As is often the case, technology dominated the conversation on Twitter. All five of the most linked-to news stories last week were Web related. The top subject was Twitter itself, with 14% of the links directed at two stories from CNET.com. One was a report about the difficulties Twitter was having rolling out its new "retweet" feature, while the other was about a new partnership between Twitter and the business-networking tool LinkedIn.
The second-largest subject, also at 14%, was an announcement by Microsoft that as many as one million users of their XBOX Live gaming service would be banned for modifying their game consoles or using illegally downloaded games. Stories about Chrome, Google's new Web-browsing software, was third at 9%, while a quote from a Microsoft executive claiming that its new Windows 7 operating system was inspired by a competitor, Macintosh, finished fourth at 8%. Also at 8% was a Wired article about people who have hacked into Apple's iPhones in order to utilize unauthorized software.
Health Care
To opponents of health care reform, who seemed to outnumber supporters in the blogosphere last week, the Nov. 7 vote to pass a bill in the House was a troubling event.
"What have Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats just done to America and the Constitution?" wondered Scared Monkeys. "How irresponsible could a Congress be? With 10.2% unemployment, people loses their jobs, their homes and struggling mightily.... Imperial Congress passes a bill that would cost $1.2 trillion to an already out of control deficit... Wake up, the point of the bill was to control you."*
"As you know, the House of Misrepresentatives passed a healthcare reform bill last weekend," added Emawkc at 3 o'clock AM. "Some people will consider this bill the ‘change' promised by the Obama Syndicate lo those many months ago. Those people will be wrong. Our government has been wasting money on Federally financed ‘entitlements' for decades. Nothing new here, just more of the same."
Some supporters applauded the vote, although a number of liberals were upset at Democrats who voted for the bill despite an amendment that would restrict the availability of abortions covered by insurance.
"It's a big step toward health care reform in the US," noted Emily at Feminist Looking Glass. "But amid the cautious celebratory mood progressives are undoubtedly in, there's a shadow that should be looming over all of us. The House has passed a bill that has an absolute and utter lack of protection of abortion rights."
"This a serious hit to reproductive rights," worried The Word of Bowers. "What makes me really angry is that a good percentage of the Democrats who voted for the bill did so despite carrying the ‘pro-choice' banner.... But she [Pelosi], along with many Democrats, were so desperate to pass a health care bill that it didn't matter if it clashed with one of the major ideals for many in the party."
While in the minority, a few bloggers attempted to evaluate the specifics contained in the bill.
Zane Safrit, a radio host and small business owner, decided the measure featured more positives than negatives.
The biggest benefit, Safrit decided, was the elimination of so-called job-lock. "Health insurance not tied to your employer frees each of us to pursue the opportunities where we can contribute the most. And it frees smaller companies to compete for the talent they need to grow their business," he wrote. "And for no increase or even a savings for businesses now able to offer health insurance, I see mandated health insurance as a cost-saver. That's a pretty good days work for Congress."
Fort Hood
This week, most of the conversation about the Fort Hood rampage related to the suspect and his religion. Many bloggers linked to a Washington Post slideshow from a 2007 presentation Hasan made about threats the military could face from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Islamic countries. And that led many commentators to conclude that the military was negligent in missing clear warning signs.
Describing the slideshow, editor-in-chief Marty Peretz posted on the New Republic blog, "Hasan's ostensible topic was ‘The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.' It might as well have been titled, as the scholar Barry Rubin suggested, ‘Why I Intend to Murder 13 American Soldiers at Foot Hood.' But, since nobody in the higher-up military actually noticed that a very shaky psychiatrist, indeed, gave an official medical rounds talk -- maybe even grand rounds -- on Islam, Hasan did, in fact, go on to kill 13 men and women and wound another 28."
"Dr. Hasan's professors and medical supervisors clearly dropped the ball," added Barry Brownstein at Giving Up Control. "They refused to fulfill their professional obligations.... Did they drop the ball because of political correctness or were they simply cowardly, inept, and/or lazy? Of course, we don't know; but because they didn't carry out their professional obligations and hold Dr. Hasan to the same standards they were presumably holding others too, Dr. Hassan was taught very bad lessons."
Others focused on what they perceived was a Muslim threat to the country.
"They all knew the guy was a stark raving mad Islamic fundamentalist loony, yet they did nothing, because they're afraid to do anything about ANY Muslims at all, thanks to the terror of Political Correctness (oh, yes, political correctness is a form of terrorism!), which is used to the Islamic supremacists' and jihadists' advantage over the Free World and its People," argued The Canadian Sentinel.
"Islam is an existential threat, immediately to random individuals ... and to the nation in the long term if we don't wise up and defend ourselves adequately and effectively by eliminating it," proclaimed dajjal at Freedom Ain't Free & Take Our Country Back. "We can no more tolerate Islam in our midst than rattlesnakes and copper heads in our homes."
A few commentators disagreed with the notion that Islam was the problem, but instead insisted that Hasan's interpretations of the religion were incorrect.
"What is absolutely preposterous and horrific about Major Hasan's views (if he was, in fact, motivated by his skewed interpretation of Islam) is his interpretation of the Qur'an's prohibition against ‘murdering fellow Muslims' as a license to go and kill fellow soldiers," wrote Hadia Mubarak at Seasonsnidur. "How, in the name of humanity, can someone interpret a verse against killing believers as a license to kill someone else? There is absolutely no religious justification in Islam for the murder committed by Major Hasan or for acts of violence that unjustly take away life."
For more on the New Media Index, including the week's top YouTube videos and methodology, see journalism.org.
*For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings.