Project for Excellence in Journalism

Splitting Blogs Over Tax Policy

December 16, 2010

The online community weighed in heavily on the tax cut deal struck between President Obama and congressional Republicans. In this case, the greatest split came among the liberal commentators themselves who were divided in their assessments of the deal.

For the week of Dec. 6-10, 15% of the news links on blogs were about the tax cut accord, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Public survey data from the Pew Research Center showed strong support across party lines for the agreed upon tax cuts. Within the active blogger community, though, greater nuance arose, revealing a tension among liberals as to whether to support the benefits the cuts will bring or criticize the president for the compromise.

The majority of liberal bloggers criticized the president for accepting the deal which included an extension of the tax cuts for the richest 2% of the public. Some on the left, though, agreed with Obama that the deal was the best option he could get under the political circumstances.

On the conservative side, bloggers were mostly satisfied with the compromise, though, they directed little praise at Obama for his role in it.

The second most linked-to story (at 13%) was a critical editorial by the Washington Post about the recently released movie "Fair Game" based on the Valerie Plame/CIA leak affair.

Third, at 12%, was news that Pope Benedict XVI announced he would gladly use a solar-powered popemobile as a sign of support for sustainable energy.

The other major story that drew attention last week was the continuing controversy over the leak of classified State Department cables by the website WikiLeaks. The subject was No. 1 on Twitter, with 33% of the news links, and tied for fourth on blogs (at 10%).

In this debate, the social media community mostly countered broader public opinion. While 60% of those paying attention to the story said WikiLeaks harmed the public interest, the vast majority of bloggers and Twitterers defended the leaked material as a positive example of free speech.

Supporters on Twitter, for example, agreed with an editorial by Wired editor Evan Hansen, who expressed his view that WikiLeaks is good for America because the exposure of information strengthens democracy. They also highlighted a number of news stories that demonstrated a suspicion that powerful entities, such as the State Department and large corporations, were working to censor the flow of information.

Continue reading the full report at 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.}