The Year in News 2010

Disaster, Economic Anxiety, but Little Interest in War

January 11, 2011

Two weeks into the year, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti and dominated the news in the United States for a month. As coverage began to subside, the climactic legislative battle over remaking the American health care system took on a feverish quality -- and began its own month-long control of the news. In April, an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico commandeered the media's attention all the way into August. And from Labor Day to Nov. 2, the midterm elections held the media's fascination far beyond anything else.

But throughout the year, one story remained a constant -- the narrative morphing and evolving to be sure, but usually conveying the same underlying message of apprehension: The No. 1 story of the year was the weakened state of the U.S. economy.

By year's end, the economy registered among the top four stories every week studied by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism in its weekly News Coverage Index. And the attention given the story was remarkably consistent. Economic news accounted for between 13% and 17% of the overall coverage studied in every quarter of 2010.

Yet, it was often overshadowed by bigger breaking news events. Although it was the first or second story 39 weeks out of 50, the economy filled more than 30% of the news studied only once. Health care, the election and the oil spill together passed that threshold nine times.
For its part, the public paid keen attention to the nervous economic news. The news media's No. 1 story of the year consistently generated high levels of attention among news consumers, even as the major breaking stories of 2010 garnered more public interest for many weeks this year.

But surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press also found divergence between the media's and public's news priorities. (A fuller report on the findings of the News Interest Index is here.)

In the case of several major events -- the Haiti earthquake, health care reform legislation, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill -- news consumers maintained high levels of interest even after press attention had diminished. And at the other end of the spectrum, the public displayed considerably less interest than the media in several "inside the Beltway" stories, especially the comments that led to the dismissal of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

New media, meanwhile, had a varied news agenda. The blogosphere generally mirrored the mainstream media, according to PEJ's research, while Twitter users were far more interested in technology and international affairs.

These are among the findings of a review of three different research efforts by the Pew Research Center. The weekly News Coverage Index by the Project for Excellence in Journalism measures the news the public was exposed to from the mainstream media. PEJ's New Media Index tracks the conversation in blogs, the top news videos on YouTube and the discussion of news on Twitter. And the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' weekly New Interest Index survey measures the public reaction to that news coverage.

These complementary measures offer a unique look at the public conversation in the United States by tracking, in effect, the media stimulus and the public response to the news.

PEJ's News Coverage Index monitors news in 52 different mainstream media outlets from print, online, cable, network broadcast and radio. The New Media Index monitors commentary on millions of news-focused blogs as identified by the web tracking site Icerocket, and the leading news topics on Twitter as identified by the web tracking site Tweetmeme.

Among the findings:

• Although the economy was the leading subject of the year, no one dimension of the story dominated the media narrative. In the first few months of 2010, it was the fate of the battered financial sector that generated attention. In the third quarter, the big news was about the employment picture. And in the final three months of the year negotiations over the Bush-era tax cuts took center stage.
• While the media and public were in sync on the economy, the press showed considerably more interest than the public in a number of Washington-centric stories, such as the forced resignations of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Agriculture Department staffer Shirley Sherrod, as well as the 2010 elections.
• When it came to the nation's two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, the press and the public mutually displayed only modest interest. Coverage of the Afghanistan war dropped to just 4% of all the news studied in 2010, (down from 5% in 2009) as the nine-year-old conflict often struggled for attention in the mainstream media. The big change in last year's narrative was the diminished attention to U.S. policy debates over the war. Coverage of the Iraq war, meanwhile, dropped to 1% of the newshole studied from 2% in 2009.
• An examination of the top stories in social and online media in 2010 found dramatic differences between what bloggers and Twitter users talked about last year. The top story in the blogosphere was the economy (10%), same as in the mainstream media (14%). But the leading news topic on Twitter was computer giant Apple (13%).
• The Tea Party phenomenon was a key narrative of the 2010 midterms. During the last two months of the campaign, the Tea Party accounted for twice the campaign coverage (13%) as the impact of the economy and health care on the election combined. Much of the fascination was with the most controversial candidates. For instance, Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell, who was soundly defeated, generated more election coverage between Labor Day and Election Day than anyone other than President Obama.
• Due largely to the Gulf oil spill and the Haiti earthquake -- as well as mine explosions in West Virginia and Chile -- coverage of disasters in 2010 spiked dramatically, up to 8% of the overall newshole from only 2% the year before. The long-running oil spill story in particular defied the traditional "one-week wonder" pattern for disasters, in which the media initially flood the zone with coverage, but quickly lose interest.
• In the heated cable news wars, CNN is often viewed as the odd man out in the ideological battles waged by MSNBC and the Fox News Channel. But 2010 also proved that CNN was the cable outlier when it came to news agenda. For instance, it devoted considerably more coverage to the oil spill (12%) and Haiti (5%) and less to the election (11%) than either of its two rivals.

Top 10 Stories of 2010

No one story dominated the news in 2010. The biggest story, the economy, commanded just 14% of the news studied, the lowest number for a top story of the year since PEJ began its comprehensive real-time study of the news agenda in 2007.

While rarely an overwhelming focus of coverage, the economy demonstrated remarkable staying power in 2010. And in so doing, the economic narrative that began in the fall of 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers was the No. 1 story for the second year in a row.

The No. 2 story of 2010 was the midterm election season (10%), followed by the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill (7%). The debate over health care reform (5%) and the war in Afghanistan (4%) rounded out the top-five stories.

The economy was a staple of the news agenda in 2010. It registered as the No. 1 or No. 2 story in 39 of 50 weeks studied. The high water mark, 41%, came late in the year, the week of Dec. 6-12, when President Obama and congressional Republicans struck a deal on extending tax cuts.

One major reason for the steady drumbeat of attention was the large number of economic indicators and storylines -- from the health of the job market to the housing market to the financial sector. Coverage of the second-biggest economic storyline, the employment picture, (the leading storyline was tax policy) remained fairly high throughout most of the year.

But other key themes spiked at different points in 2010. Attention to the financial sector, for example, peaked in the first quarter (at 17% of the economic newshole). The concern then focused on the financial health of banks and the implementation of new credit card rules. The subject of federal oversight peaked during the second quarter (22% of the economic newshole) when Congress tackled the Wall Street reform legislation.

Recession fears took up the slack in the third quarter (8% of the economic coverage). Growth numbers were revised downward, and analysts started talking about a "double dip" recession. Attention to the job market also jumped to a high water mark (20%) in those three months. In the last quarter of 2010, the subject of taxes took off (35%) as Obama and the Republicans hammered out the compromise on the Bush-era tax cuts.

The economy generated somewhat less interest on television news than in other sectors. It generated the most attention in newspapers (16% of the front-page coverage), followed by radio (also 16%) and online (14%). The subject accounted for 12% of the airtime studied on cable and 11% on network news.

Since the economic crisis exploded into public view more than two years ago, newspapers have consistently devoted the most coverage to the subject. But several factors may help explain the lower levels of TV attention. For one thing, subjects such as national debt and employment and budget issues don't readily provide television-friendly graphics and visuals.

On cable, which thrives on ideological combat, the lack of pitched political battles over the economy -- in contrast, say, to the major stimulus fight in early 2009 -- may have contributed to the relative lack of coverage in 2010.

The Press and the Public: Divergent and Dovetailing News Agendas

On some big stories -- most notably the economy -- the media and American news consumers were on the same page in 2010. But the media's interest in a number of major events subsided long before the public's, and citizens did not share the press fascination with Beltway-centric stories.

See "Press Coverage and Public Interest" for a more detailed analysis of differences and similarities.

Blogs and Twitter: Two Very Different News Agendas

Bloggers and the mainstream media agreed on four of the top five stories-the economy, the midterm elections, the health care debate and the war in Afghanistan, according to PEJ's New Media Index.Yet the index found that discussion about the news on Twitter was fundamentally different. Read more here.

The 2010 Midterms: A Tea Party Tale

In the mainstream press, the election became a major story, registering second overall, filling 10% of the coverage studied for the year. The key element of that coverage was the emerging political movement that coalesced around opposition to President Obama that helped propel the GOP electoral wave. Read more here.

The Year of the Disaster

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded several dozen miles off the Louisiana Coast, killing 11 people. By the time the gushing leak was finally stanched, the BP oil spill had emerged as the No. 3 story of the year (7% of the newshole). Read more here.

The War that Struggles for Headlines

One year ago, after coverage had grown markedly in the second half of 2009, Afghanistan finally seemed to have emerged as a major ongoing story. In 2010, however, the year when the nine-year-old war produced the highest U.S. death toll, Afghanistan receded from the headlines as the debate over U.S. policy quieted. Read more here.

CNN as the Cable Outlier

CNN is often described as the odd man out in the cable news wars. Unlike Fox and MSNBC-whose prime-time programming is dominated by ideological hosts who tilt right and left respectively-its prime-time programming does not feature a dominant ideology. But a study of 2010 cable coverage reveals another major area in which CNN differentiates itself from its rivals. It has a dramatically different news agenda in terms of what it covers. Read more here.

A Big Jump in Politics, a Big Drop in Health

Aside from major events or running stories, PEJ also examines coverage from the perspective of general topic categories. How much coverage is given to such subjects as education, lifestyle or religion, taking all the events of the year into account? Read more here.

Read the full report, use an interactive feature to explore how media varied in their coverage of different topic, and take a 10-question quiz to test your own knowledge of media news coverage in 2010 at journalism.org.