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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Job Numbers Boost Economic Coverage
Gulf Spill Coverage Continues to Dwindle
Two stories -- one that featured some gloomy news and another with a distinctly more upbeat tone -- vied for attention at the top of the news agenda last week.
Driven by disappointing jobs numbers that cast further doubt on the strength of the recovery, the economy narrowly edged out the Gulf oil disaster, where the major news was a successful stanching of the disastrous leak.
The sputtering economy, fueled by a July labor report showing no change in the nation's unemployment rate, accounted for 12% of the newshole from Aug. 2-8, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was up modestly from 10% the previous week as coverage of the jobs situation accounted for more than a third of all the economy-related news studied.
Coverage of the Gulf oil disaster made up 11% of the week's news, with attention focused on the apparent success of the "static kill" measure, which by the week's end seemed to have permanently stopped the flow. Despite this important development, the spill saga generated its lowest amount of media attention since the week of April 19-25, when the oil rig exploded and the story received 5% of the coverage.
The 2010 midterm elections followed the Gulf disaster as the No. 3 story as voters went to the polls for primary elections in several states. But a significant portion of the coverage dwelt on perceived troubles for the Democratic Party, which included everything from House members under ethics investigations to internal bickering. Overall, the story filled 8% of the newshole.
As the No. 4 story for the week, the debate over same-sex marriage made news when a California judge ruled that California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in the state is unconstitutional. That subject accounted for 5% of all the week's news coverage.
Finally, the national conversation about immigration, which featured continuing fallout from the July 28 federal judge ruling that blocked portions of Arizona's new law, reached the No. 5 spot for the week, with 4% of all media coverage.
One story that failed to rank among the top five stories was the war in Afghanistan, which had received a boost the week before from the WikiLeaks dissemination of about 90,000 classified war documents. From July 26-Aug. 1, the WikiLeaks story and overall coverage of the war combined to account for 19% of the newshole. But last week, that number fell to only 3%, again suggesting that the nation's longest war has had difficulty generating major sustained coverage.
Continue reading the full report at journalism.org.