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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Bin Laden Coverage Changes Course
The death of Osama bin Laden continued to dominate the news last week, but the narrative finally began to shift from dissecting the May 1 raid to more controversial topics, such as politics and Pakistan.
From May 9-15, the bin Laden saga filled 24% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That represents a drop-off of nearly two-thirds from the previous week (69%), as measured by PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index, but it was still nearly triple the attention to any other story.
A week earlier, the bin Laden story was the biggest ever measured in a single week by PEJ, since it began this research in January 2007.
The bin Laden saga generated the most coverage last week on cable news- -- 41% of the airtime studied. But there were dramatic differences among the three major channels. While CNN devoted about two-thirds of its airtime (65%) to the subject, that fell to about one-third (35%) on MSNBC. Fox News, meanwhile, devoted only one-fifth of its newshole (20%) to bin Laden.
Our data from the last few years reveals that cable news, particularly MSNBC and Fox News, tends to focus on topics about which there is more inherent ideological divide.
Aside from the drop in overall coverage, there were significant changes in how the story was covered last week. The story line that had stood out above all others the first week after the raid, reconstructing what happened at bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, accounted for less than 10% of the coverage after representing more than one-third the week before.
Now, in week two following the raid, several other bin Laden-related themes began to take over the media narrative from May 9-15.
One was the implication of bin Laden's killing on worldwide terrorism, which accounted for 23% of the overall coverage. Another was the growing politicization of the story as partisans sparred over whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama deserved credit for the mission. After filling 15% the first week, it grew to 21% last week.
The third growing story line was Pakistan, with an emerging media portrait of the country as an unreliable, or perhaps even duplicitous, U.S. ally. It also accounted for 21% of the bin Laden coverage.
The bin Laden story continued to dwarf the economy and other news, but some of these other subjects were beginning to come back. The week's No. 2 story, at 9%, was the U.S. economy, with House Speaker John Boehner getting attention by declaring that Republicans would not agree to raise the debt ceiling without major spending cuts. A related subject, gas prices, accounted for another 4% as energy executives appeared before Congress last week amid calls to end oil company tax breaks.
Next, also at 9%, was a natural disaster -- the Mississippi River flooding threatening Southern communities, most notably Memphis, Tenn. Only two weeks earlier, another such disaster, the tornadoes that ripped through the Southeast, was the top story at 15% of the newshole.
The fourth-biggest story (8%) was the 2012 presidential race, as Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul entered the GOP fray and Mike Huckabee opted out of another run. That was followed, at 7%, by the continued turmoil in the Middle East, where violence in Syria and Libya generated the most attention. This represents a major drop off, however. In the first three months of 2011, the Mideast unrest filled 25% of the coverage studied by PEJ's News Coverage Index.