News Index
In a number of recent presidential campaigns,
 someone or something has emerged from obscurity to become a household word and an integral part of the media narrative. In the 1988 race it was a Massachusetts criminal named Willie Horton, and four years later, it was a former television reporter turned singer named Gennifer Flowers. In 2004, the name in the headlines was a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This year, at least so far, the newsmaker from nowhere is Chicago minister Jeremiah Wright.
Last week—as Wright re-emerged into full public view to speak to PBS’ Bill Moyers, the NAACP and the National Press Club—the controversy he generated made more news than both Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Clinton was a significant or dominant factor in 41% of the campaign stories and McCain registered in 14% of them. Meanwhile the relationship between Wright and his former parishioner Obama accounted for 42% of the week’s campaign coverage. Obama, who moved to decisively denounce Wright last week, was the significant or dominant newsmaker in 69% of the stories, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4. These coverage numbers are strikingly similar to those from March 17-23 when Wright’s inflammatory statements about race and the U.S. triggered the first Obama damage control effort, including a major March 18 speech on race relations. That week, the Wright-Obama story line accounted for 37% of the campaign stories and Obama dominated coverage at 72%. Clinton (at 30%) and McCain (17%) were virtual afterthoughts.
As the primary voting has slowed, the media have focused on a number of Democratic campaign controversies—from Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers in Bosnia to Obama’s remarks about economically disadvantaged Americans being “bitter.” But none have had the staying power of the Wright flap. In the period from March 17 through May 4, the Wright-Obama story line made up 17%, or one out of six, of all the campaign stories studied. And last week saw the biggest spike yet in that coverage. There were significant policy issues at play in last week’s Democratic campaign leading up to the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. Clinton and Obama sparred over how to handle Iran and the proposed gas-tax holiday. The issue of gas prices accounted for the second-biggest category of campaign stories last week at 7%. And the next biggest chunk of campaign coverage, at 5%, was Indiana superdelegate and former Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew switching his support from Clinton to Obama. But even after combining the gas and the Andrew coverage, that is less than one-third of the attention paid last week to Wright.
Overall, the presidential campaign accounted for 38% of the newshole in print, online, radio and television, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 28-May 4. Once again it was cable television, with its insatiable appetite for election news and speculation that far outstripped any other media sector in coverage. The 70% of the cable airtime devoted to the campaign last week almost equaled the combined campaign newshole numbers for network TV (27%), online (22%) and in newspapers (22%). The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. As it ricocheted throughout the week, the Wright story struck numerous angles in the press coverage. What were Wright’s motives for potentially damaging the candidacy of a man he supports? How much political damage has been done? Was Obama’s denunciation sufficient? And then, as is almost always the case with a mega-story, the media’s role itself became an issue. After airing footage of Wright’s aggressive defense of himself at the National Press Club on his April 28 show, CNN’s Anderson Cooper—who dubbed the controversy “Hurricane Jeremiah”—mused that “for a guy who supports Barack Obama, he couldn’t be doing any more damage to his candidate, could he?”
The next night, on the CBS newscast, the subject was Obama’s denunciation of Wright, a far stronger response than what Obama delivered in his March 18 speech on race. That speech was praised for its nuance. This response was covered in more purely political terms. “Barack Obama shifted today into major damage control, all but severing his ties to the pastor he once defended,” declared anchor Katie Couric, while correspondent Dean Reynolds noted that Wright’s words had put the Obama campaign in a “defensive crouch.” On the May 1 edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” correspondent David Schaper canvassed voters in Hammond Indiana and found a variety of reactions. A retired roofer who supports Obama called Wright a “jerk” who may have damaged his candidate’s chances. An undecided retired steelworker said Wright’s words were making it harder for him to choose Obama. A former union president supporting Clinton declared that Wright’s views “had to sink in” on Obama during his 20 years in the church. But a retired steelworker, and Republican who is supporting Obama, asserted that a candidate should not be judged by his pastor. The next day, on May 2, the Times sampled sentiment from the second battleground state—getting reaction from black churches in North Carolina. There were various crosscurrents ranging from sympathy for Wright to offense at his remarks to something in between. “There’s some truth to the things Reverend Wright spoke about. And the Bible says the truth shall set you free,” one associate pastor told the paper. “But the Bible also says there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.” And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Aside from the campaign last week, news of the U.S. economy—driven last week by another interest rate cut and reports of very slow growth—was the second-biggest story, filling 10% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (In the first four months of the 2008, the troubled economy has been the No. 2 story, averaging 7% of the newshole per week) That was followed by events inside Iraq (3%) coverage of gas and oil prices (3%) and concerns about a global food shortage (2%). Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
The week began with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
 bashing each other with negative TV ads on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. It ended with the prospect of a longer, tougher contest after Clinton’s win, and with the volatile issue of race again occupying a prominent place in the media narrative.
Given that the coverage of the crucial April 22 Pennsylvania vote accounted for 53% of all the campaign stories, last week’s election news was utterly dominated by the Democrats. Obama was a dominant or significant newsmaker in 70% of the campaign stories, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index for April 21-27. Clinton was close behind at 64%, generating her highest level of media attention this year. (Bill Clinton accounted for another 3%). In one sign of what was at stake for Democrats in Pennsylvania, a post-primary spin war erupted over Clinton’s actual margin of victory—and whether it reached the magic double-digit mark some pundits set as the yardstick for a big win for her. On April 23, a Huffington Post blogger wrote that “The official results for last night’s debate as of 12 noon Eastern time are: Hillary Clinton - 1,258,278 (54.7 percent) Barack Obama - 1,042,573 (45.3 percent)…When you subtract 45.3 from 54.7 you get 9.4.The last time I checked my use of statistical analysis, 9.4 isn't 10…So, why is the mainstream media reporting that Hillary won by "double digits?”
As the week rolled on, the Pennsylvania results spawned another story line: How big a factor is race playing in Obama’s problems with blue-collar Democrats? The recurring racial angle in this campaign was also rekindled by the resurfacing of Obama’s controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose interview with PBS host Bill Moyers quickly circulated throughout the media, making him a significant or dominant factor in 7% of the coverage. John McCain embarked on a tour of economically hard-hit areas of the nation last week and made some news with his harsh criticism of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. But overshadowed by events in Pennsylvania, McCain’s coverage continued its recent downward trajectory, dropping to 17% from 24% the previous week and from 35% the week of April 7-13.
Despite McCain’s struggle for attention, coverage of the campaign filled 44% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 21-27. That marked the highest level of weekly coverage since March 3-9, the period that included the key primary contests in Ohio and Texas. Once again, cable was the media sector that devoted the greatest proportion of its newshole—in this case 74% of the airtime studied—to the campaign. To illustrate how completely the race for the White House drove the media agenda last week, the second-biggest story—the troubled U.S. economy
The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. In the tactical analysis of the Pennsylvania vote—or what MSNBC dubbed “Spinnsylvania” –three main storylines emerged, different in tone but not mutually exclusive. One was enunciated on MSNBC when political director Chuck Todd declared that in the crucial delegate count, “nothing really changed at all…the pledged delegate count is going to be Obama’s.” Another one, more favorable to Clinton was in an AP story on Google News that asked, “Why can’t Obama close the deal? It’s a question Hillary Clinton and her surrogates raised throughout the last days of the caustic Pennsylvania primary contest.” A third theme, that of a continuing bloody primary struggle, was embedded in this headline in the April 24 Washington Post: “Continuing Battle Divides Democrats: Leaders to Seek End After Primaries to Avoid Further Damage.” Another narrative that also surfaced after Pennsylvania was the extent to which race played a role in the vote. Citing such statistics as Clinton’s level of support (75%) among the 13% of white Pennsylvania voters who said race was an important factor, ABC News national correspondent Claire Shipman said some numbers do “suggest what nobody really wants to think—that race may be an issue.” The racial temperature heated up further when African-American Congressman James Clyburn, an uncommitted super delegate, gave the New York Times an April 24 interview. In it, he called Bill Clinton’s campaign conduct “bizarre” and said many blacks were convinced the Clintons were trying to “damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”
At the same time, Rev. Wright, whose inflammatory remarks about race and the U.S. have dogged the Obama campaign, raised his public profile dramatically last week—giving the PBS an interview before speaking to the NAACP and at the National Press Club. By April 24, the PBS excerpts had been widely disseminated. Assessing the reappearance of the pastor in political terms for the Obama campaign, the April 25 Washington Times went with the headline, “Wright response at the wrong time?” Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain made some news of his own last week by blasting the response of the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina. In an April 24 PBS NewsHour story on his tour of the still battered Ninth Ward in New Orleans, anchor Ray Suarez reported on McCain’s statement that had he been President , “he would have landed his plane immediately to survey the damage.” Even with that tough critique of President Bush, McCain found it hard to break through the din of Pennsylvania.
And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Last week, the drop-off between campaign coverage and the rest of the news menu was dramatic. The second biggest story, at only 4% of the newshole, was the troubled U.S. economy. The continued fallout from the raid on the Texas polygamist compound was next at 3%. Growing fears of a global food shortage driven by rising prices followed at 3% and a related subject—skyrocketing oil and gas prices—rounded out the top-five story list at 2% of the newshole. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
Last week, a major part of the media
 narrative about the 2008 campaign involved the media themselves—specifically ABC’s Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos and the April 16 debate they moderated in Philadelphia.
Two major story lines drove press coverage in the last full week before the long-awaited Democratic Pennsylvania primary. The first was continued fallout over Obama’s remarks that some economically struggling citizens get “bitter” and “cling” to guns or religion. That subject accounted for 25% of all the campaign coverage last week. The second major story line, which accounted for another 22% of the coverage, was the ABC debate, which sparked its own debate over whether Obama bore the brunt of too many gaffe and “gotcha” questions. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales, among the critical reviewers, criticized the moderators’ performances as “shoddy” and “despicable.” New York Times columnist David Brooks spoke for the opposing view when he lauded the questions, declaring that the “journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable.” In either event, the controversy marked the clearest example of the media being injected into the middle of the campaign since the much-criticized Feb. 21 New York Times story suggesting an improper relationship between John McCain and a female lobbyist.
After watching his media coverage climb recently, GOP candidate John McCain fell back to 24% last week, a drop of 11 points from the week before. (All told, the Democrats generated almost six times as many stories as the Republicans last week.) For McCain, that coverage was mixed. He received substantial attention for the economic plan he unveiled on April 15. But as the week went on, McCain found himself dealing not with fiscal policy, but with two lingering personal issues—his age and his temper.
By filling 31% of the overall newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 14-20, the campaign bounced back from the previous week, when it accounted for only 23%—the low water mark in 2008. It was the top story in four of the five media sectors, with the Pope’s visit topping the online coverage. And once again, the election story was driven by the intense coverage on cable—where it accounted for 51% of the airtime studied—and radio, where it filled 39%. The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. In recent weeks, with journalists decamped in Pennsylvania for a long single-state campaign, the media narrative has often shifted focus from one candidate to another. One week, a major question is whether Obama is tough enough to engineer a victory in a fierce and grueling campaign. Another week, the key issue is whether Clinton will listen to calls for her to drop out. One week, the media focus on the incendiary remarks of Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The next, the spotlight shines on Clinton’s erroneous recollection about dodging snipers on a Bosnia trip. But this week, even as Obama generated more of the coverage, the two candidates were intertwined in the two big story lines. Obama’s “bitter” sentiments brought criticism from Clinton and a counterattack from Obama. A similar dynamic prevailed after the controversial debate, an event that both candidates tried to use as ammunition against the other.
The “bitter” comments quickly descended into a bitter fight between the Democratic rivals, as chronicled in the April 14 Philadelphia Inquirer. After Clinton called those remarks “elitist and divisive,” and expressed support for gun owners, Obama struck back by asserting that “She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley,” a reference to the famed female sharpshooter of the Old West. One night later, the CBS Evening News reported that a new Clinton ad playing on the controversy was part of a strategy “to hammer Obama relentlessly,” while the Illinois Senator fought back with a $2 million per week ad blitz of its own. The April 16 debate quickly engulfed not only the candidates, but the moderators too. With Obama frequently on the defensive—facing questions on everything from his failure to wear a flag pin to his relationship with Rev. Wright and former radical William Ayers—the encounter triggered considerable criticism in the mainstream media and blogosphere. “This was by far, the worst handled debate in the history of politics,” declared one poster on the ABC News web site. The uproar was loud enough that on April 18, the New York Times ran a story headlined, “Who Lost the Debate? Moderators, Many Say.” Obama’s complaints about the lack of substantive questions in the debate triggered another skirmish between the candidates. Above a caption that read, “Democrats Gripe About Griping,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer noted on his April 18 show that “Hillary Clinton now suggests Barack Obama isn’t tough enough to be President based on his reaction to some difficult debate questions.” That elicited a countercharge of “blatant hypocrisy” by the Obama camp, which cited Clinton’s complaint at a previous debate that she was always being asked the first question. By week’s end, the debate over the debate had become another of the increasingly hostile exchanges between the two candidates. McCain made his own news last week by unveiling an economic plan on April 15 that included a temporary repeal of the federal gas tax during the summer, increasing the income tax exemption for dependents and cutting spending. In a lukewarm, at best, assessment on the NBC Nightly News, correspondent Kelly O’Donnell noted that “critics and some economists argue that McCain’s math is wrong.” The next day, the 71-year-old McCain found himself responding to remarks made by 75-year-old Democratic Congressman John Murtha that the presidency is “no old man’s job.” On Sunday April 20, the Washington Post published a page-one story examining McCain’s “temperament”—aka temper. The piece—which began with a five-paragraph account of a heated confrontation between McCain and fellow Senator Charles Grassley in 1992—weighed whether McCain’s famous temper made him “an erratic hothead” or “a firebrand who is resolute against the forces of greed and gutlessness.” There is little doubt that the question will be explored further by the media in the general campaign. And now, in the rest of the week’s news: Pope Benedict XVI’s six-day trip to the U.S.—which included his dramatic meeting with victims of the clergy sexual abuse scandal—was the second biggest story of the week, filling 16% of the overall newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 14-20. (At 22% of the newshole, it was the top story online.) Next came coverage of the Texas polygamy raid (8%), which last week included the custody fight over more than 400 children removed from the compound. The economy followed at 5% of the newshole, just ahead of coverage of events inside Iraq, which registered at 3%. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector. Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index
John McCain lagged significantly behind In many of the weeks since he effectively clinched the nomination on Super Tuesday, McCain has been on the losing side of a battle for headlines. Even last week, according to PEJ’s Campaign Coverage Index, he was a significant or dominant factor in 35% of the campaign stories from April 7-13, trailing both Clinton (56%) and Obama (46%). But that 35% also marked McCain’s highest level of coverage since Feb. 18-24 when the New York Times ran a widely criticized story suggesting an inappropriate relationship between him and a female lobbyist. Sometimes, moreover, it’s the nature of the coverage rather than the level that counts. Last week, the largest element of campaign coverage involved a subject that McCain has staked his presidential bid on—the Iraq war. Coverage of General David Petraeus’ report to Congress accounted for 14% of all campaign coverage. (This re-focus on the debate over Iraq is one reason why the race for the White House had its lowest week of coverage in 2008.) Although McCain is in the position of supporting an unpopular war, he fared pretty well in the media’s analysis of how the three candidates handled Petraeus’ presentation. And he was bolstered by a poll that showed the public trusts him more than Clinton or Obama when it comes to handling Iraq, despite that position. The Arizona Senator also benefited from some media speculation about a vice-presidential running mate that included the name of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. That helps remind voters that McCain is the only one of the three presidential contenders certain to be on the November ballot.
Obama was a beneficiary of those Clinton problems—that is until he generated his own controversy that surfaced with an April 11 Huffington Post report on a fundraiser in San Francisco five days earlier. There Obama said that people in small towns who feel economically disenfranchised “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” That statement was quickly criticized as elitist and patronizing by both Clinton and McCain. By the end of the week, the “bitter” remarks had accounted for 8% of all the campaign coverage and Obama was on the defensive. The Democrats seemed to be caught up in a game of gaffe ping-pong, with the media eagerly keeping score.
The Campaign Coverage index is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI. If General Petraeus’ visit to Washington last week gave the presidential candidates a chance to distinguish themselves on Iraq, the media post-mortems pretty much called it a three-way tie. In evaluating the political impact of the Petraeus testimony, CNN’s Candy Crowley declared on April 8 that all the candidates “came away with something” beneficial to their campaigns.
Two days later on MSNBC, Hardball’s Chris Matthews rolled out a survey showing that when asked who they trust on Iraq, the public picked McCain by a 54% to 40% margin over Obama and Clinton. In trying to explain a war-weary public’s embrace of the hawkish McCain, NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert noted that “national security has always been the Achilles’ Heel for Democrats. [Citizens] believe the war was a mistake. They do want to get out. But Americans hate to lose.” On April 11, an AP story posted on AOL.com had more positive poll results for McCain. He had pulled into a tie in a match-up with Obama, erasing what had been a 10-point deficit.
Clinton began her week trying to dig out from the bad news about Mark Penn, which the April 7 New York Times called “the latest upheaval in a campaign that has seen its manager replaced, faced critical money shortages and has often lagged behind Senator Barack Obama…in a cohesive message and ground strategy.” The Penn saga accounted for 8% of the week’s campaign stories and a few days later, Clinton had to perform damage control after her husband’s unhelpful remarks about Bosnia. Bill Clinton’s decision to resurrect that Bosnia sniper story with an error-laden defense of his wife helped make him a dominant or significant factor in 10% of last week’s stories. “The Bill Clinton factor,” declared CBS anchor Harry Smith on the April 11 newscast. “He tries to explain Hillary’s statements about her Bosnia trip, but only makes things worse. Now she tells him to zip it.”
But the surfacing of Obama’s “bitter” remarks during the California fundraiser quickly changed the focus of coverage. “Outrage tonight after Senator Obama blasts small town America,” declared substitute host Kitty Pilgrim at the outset of Lou Dobbs’ April 11 CNN program. “And those remarks could seriously damage Senator Obama’s campaign.” And now, in the rest of the week’s news: There were several significant news events last week that competed with the campaign for media attention. Thanks to the Petraeus visit to Congress, the Iraq policy debate was the second-biggest story of the week, filling 10% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for April 7-13. That marked the highest level of coverage of the Iraq debate in 2008. (But it’s worth noting that when Petraeus delivered a much-awaited Iraq progress report to Congress on Sept. 10, the Iraq debate coverage filled 36% of the newshole that week.) The Beijing Olympics was next at 9%, with the story driven by the protests centered around the global travels of the Olympic torch. The raid on a polygamist sect compound in Texas was next at 7%, followed by the issue of airline travel (6%) after the cancellation of numerous flights last week for safety inspections.
Media Exposure by Candidate
Top Overall Stories of the Week
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Given his central involvement in both major story lines, Obama was the top newsmaker according to the Campaign Coverage Index from April 14-20. He was a significant or dominant factor in 76% of the campaign stories, a large leap from the previous week when he registered at 46%. Clinton, at 59%, trailed Obama, but even that was up a bit from her 56% total a week earlier.
Meanwhile, the story lines for McCain’s Democratic rivals illustrated the pitfalls facing two candidates still slugging it out. Clinton had to deal with two negative narratives that consumed much of the week. There was the demotion of chief campaign strategist Mark Penn, after it was revealed he was helping Colombia with a trade agreement that Clinton opposes. And Bill Clinton reignited a dying furor over his wife’s faulty recollection that she had dodged sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia.
