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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Clinton is the Big Winner Last Week in the Race for Coverage
Senator Hillary Clinton's poll-defying Democratic primary victory in New Hampshire helped make her the leading campaign newsmaker last week, but the resurrection in the Granite State of John McCain's once-dead campaign did not translate into similar largesse of media attention, according to a new study of media campaign coverage.
Meanwhile, the meaning of third place was also fungible last week. Mike Huckabee, a distant third in the GOP race, got sizably more media attention than did John Edwards among the Democrats.
And New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is not running, got nearly as much coverage for showing up at a conference in Oklahoma as Rudolph Giuliani did for finishing fourth among Republicans.
These are some of the findings in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's inaugural Campaign Coverage Index, a measure of which candidate is winning in the all-important race for media exposure.
From January 6 through 11, two days before the New Hampshire primary, the primary day, and the three days following, 37% of all campaign stories were either primarily or significantly about Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama came next at 32%, followed by John McCain at 24% and Mitt Romney at 19%.
The fact that both Clinton and Obama generated substantially more coverage than any Republican may reflect the inexorable influence of media expectations in shaping coverage. Clinton's stunning upset over a supposedly surging Obama defied the polls and pundit prognostications, while the polls accurately predicted McCain's win over Mitt Romney.
The coverage of the third-place finishers in New Hampshire may also say less about results and more about the expectations game. Edwards -- who finished second in Iowa and third in New Hampshire -- was far behind in the race for media exposure at 7%. Huckabee -- who won Iowa and finished a distant third in New Hampshire -- ended up a significant factor or main newsmaker in 12% of the stories. That may reflect the media consensus that while Huckabee is still alive in a fluid GOP race, the Democratic fight has largely been winnowed down to a Clinton-Obama contest.
The suddenly more competitive Democratic race also attracted more media attention last week than the wide-open GOP race. All told, 43% of campaign stories were mostly about Democrats, while Republicans dominated 32%. Another 19% were about candidates in both parties.
That higher level of coverage of Democrats, however, also continues the trend of more attention to Democrats that PEJ has monitored for much of the campaign since January of 2007.
That focus on Clinton's surprising win infused much of the media punditry following New Hampshire. But perhaps no media figure put it in edgier terms than Fox's News' Brit Hume, who on election night said, "People had written finis to the Clinton era. And guess what? They're baaaack."
Interestingly, the differences in the amount of media coverage among the top contenders in both parties last week quite closely reflected the margins in the New Hampshire vote. Clinton, who defeated Obama by three percentage points outdistanced him in coverage by five points. On the GOP side, McCain, who bested Romney by 5 points in New Hampshire, outdid him in coverage by five points as well.
Coverage of the presidential race completely overshadowed every other news story last week. The campaign filled 49% of the overall newshole from Jan. 6-11, as measured by PEJ's News Coverage Index. The topic filled more than half the newshole in three media sectors -- 53% of the airtime on radio, 54% of the time on network news, and a stunning 66% of the newshole on cable news. The next biggest story filled 4% of the newshole.
Clinton emerged not only as leading newsmaker last week, she had an even bigger edge when it came to the number of stories in which she was the dominant figure (making up at least 50% of the story). Clinton was the dominant or primary newsmaker in fully 25% of the stories, vs. 16% for Obama, 15% for McCain and 9% for Romney.