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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Anti-Muslim Sentiment Makes News
Controversies related to Muslim Americans -- one sparked by a Florida pastor's plans to burn the Koran and another by a proposal to build an Islamic community center blocks from Ground Zero -- topped the news last week as the country marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Fla., to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary by burning the Muslim holy book sparked outrage and prompted condemnation by everyone from Gen. David Petraeus to Sarah Palin. Jones eventually relented, but the controversy, and other signs of anti-Muslim sentiment, represented the No. 2 story for the week of Sept. 6-12, filling 15% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Liberal talk show hosts on radio and cable took a particular interest in the topic.
When combined with the No. 4 story (4%), the furor over a planned Muslim community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, the two stories accounted for nearly a fifth of the newshole last week, according to PEJ's News Coverage Index, which calculates the column inches and airtime devoted to stories in a broad sample of news media.
Indeed, attention to those hot-button issues concerning Islam almost completely overshadowed coverage of the Sept. 11 commemorations themselves, which accounted for only 2% of the newshole.
The sputtering economic recovery and proposals to revive it remained the single largest story of the week, accounting for 17% of the newshole. Proposals by President Obama to extend tax cuts for the middle class as well as spending more money on building roads and other infrastructure projects drove the coverage. Stubbornly high levels of unemployment and other economic news also generated headlines.
Closely tied to the economy are the political fortunes of Democrats and Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, a subject that garnered 12% of the newshole as the No. 3 story last week. Driving the narrative were predictions that the Democrats will suffer at the polls and possibly lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.
Rounding out the top five news topics were stories related to the Obama administration. These included speculation that Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, might leave to run for mayor of Chicago in 2011, as well as discussions of Obama's leadership. Those subjects represented 3% of the newshole.