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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Media Scores Budget Fight
The drama of an averted government shutdown transformed the media narrative last week into an epic contest of competing ideas about federal spending.
For a second week in a row, domestic economic issues dominated the media's attention, after months of focus on events abroad. The economy accounted for 39% of the newshole studied by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism during the week of April 11-17. It also marked the first time in 2011 that the economy held the top spot for at least two straight weeks.
Hardly dipping from the previous week's level of 40%, news about the economy was the top story in all media sectors studied, from cable TV to the internet. And the particularly high level of coverage in cable (53%) and radio (52%), two politics-heavy platforms, indicated just how politically loaded the debate about federal spending was.
Much of the coverage consisted of analysis of the speech Wednesday by President Obama, one that, based on listening to many press accounts, renewed support for the president among much of his liberal base. Obama was also the dominant newsmaker in 13% of all stories studied, double that of the previous week and a bigger share than any week since Jan. 24-30, when Obama gave the State of the Union. (To be a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.)
The jockeying for message control between an Obama-led rally to protect entitlement programs versus a Republican attempt to privatize them underscored the key subtext of last week's federal spending debate -- the 2012 presidential election.
The week was also marked by another sign that the media are gearing up for the campaign -- rumors about Obama's national origin resurfaced, this time from business tycoon Donald Trump, a potential GOP contender for the presidential nomination. These questions made up much of the coverage that focused on the Obama administration, a topic that accounted for another 4% of the newshole.
The two foreign crises that only a few weeks ago had monopolized the public's and the media's attention continued to receive coverage, but not even an elevated disaster rating level in Japan nor news of Col. Muammar Qaddafi cluster-bombing civilians were able to drive coverage of these two troubled places any higher than the previous week.