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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Media Attention Turns To Libya
With Libya engulfed in civil war, the continuing turmoil in the Middle East returned to the top of the mainstream news agenda.
From Feb. 21-27, events in the Middle East, dominated by the precarious situation in Libya, accounted for 35% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Up from 22% the previous week, this marks the fourth time in the last five weeks the Mideast has ranked as the No. 1 story in PEJ's News Coverage Index.
A closely related topic -- the rise in oil and gas prices attributed to the Libyan instability -- filled another 2% of the newshole.
The oft-heard criticism that an insular U.S. media pay too little attention to international events is belied by the intensity of sustained coverage since protests erupted in Egypt on Jan. 25. In the five weeks from Jan. 24-Feb. 27, unrest in the Middle East has accounted for 35% of the newshole, double that of the next biggest story, the economy, at 17%.
To put that in context, that exceeds the biggest month of coverage of the BP oil spill (34% in May-June 2010) and just narrowly trails the biggest month of the 2010 midterm elections (37% from early October to Election Day on Nov. 2).
Indeed, the 35% of the newshole devoted to the Middle East in the past five weeks easily exceeds any month of coverage of the Iraq war, the most dominant international story tracked since PEJ began the News Coverage Index in January 2007.
Moreover, the press has followed the current unrest from hot spot to hot spot. Three weeks ago, the situation in Egypt accounted for virtually all of the Middle East coverage. Two weeks ago, after President Hosni Mubarak resigned, media attention to Bahrain spiked, accounting for about one-third of the Mideast coverage. And last week, about 90% of the attention to the region was devoted to the revolt against Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi -- whose insistence on staying in power appears to be setting up a showdown in the capital of Tripoli.
The week's No. 2 story was also sizable by traditional standards of the press agenda. The economy filled 24% of the newshole studied. About three-quarters of that was focused on state budget battles, currently playing out most dramatically in Wisconsin, which seemed to portend historic implications for the future of the labor union movement in America.
That economic coverage, however, is down from the previous week when the subject filled 34% of the newshole studied and was divided between two major storylines -- the Wisconsin situation and reaction to President Obama's $3.73 trillion budget. In the most recent week, media attention to the budget debate died down substantially.
With two subjects filling nearly 60% of the airtime on TV and radio and space on front pages and the top of online news sites, there was a substantial drop-off in coverage of the third-biggest story of last week (4%), the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand that reportedly killed about 150 people.
There was also perhaps less coverage than there might otherwise have been of the No. 4 story (also 4%), the debate over same-sex marriage. The big newsmaker was the Obama administration's decision that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court -- a reversal of previous policy.
The fifth-biggest story last week (3%) was a hijacking by Somali pirates that culminated in the deaths of four Americans aboard a yacht.