It was the last week in August when the media first learned of Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig\u2019s June arrest for allegedly propositioning a police officer in the Minneapolis airport. In the weeks that followed, Craig agreed to resign from the Senate, changed his mind, and tried to rescind his guilty plea.<\/p>\n\n
By the time September ended, the scandal had become the eighth-biggest story of the quarter, filling 2% of the overall newshole in PEJ\u2019s news index. (Steady coverage of the Craig saga continued well into October, the beginning of the fourth quarter.) Craig\u2019s contention that he was innocent, as well as his deliberations over whether to serve out his second term, provided two major weeks of news coverage.<\/p>\n\n
On the political scandal spectrum for the first nine months of the year, Craig\u2019s saga fit somewhere between the problems that beset former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the case of Louisiana\u2019s Republican Senator, David Vitter, whose phone number was found in the \u201cD.C. Madam\u2019s\u201d records.<\/p>\n\n
From January through September, the Gonzales-related scandals took up slightly more than 2% of the overall newshole and registered as the sixth-biggest story of the year. Over the same nine-month period, Craig\u2019s arrest accounts for about 1% of the newshole, which put it well ahead of the D.C. escort scandal involving Vitter, which registered only at about one-tenth of 1%.<\/p>\n\n
But for intensity, at its peak the Craig scandal was a major newsmaker. The first week the news broke, Aug. 26-31, the Craig story was easily the top subject, filling 18% of the overall newshole. The Senator\u2019s predicament that week generated twice the coverage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales\u2019 Aug. 27 resignation. (And that 18% matches the highest level of weekly coverage generated by U.S. attorneys scandal\u2014with Gonzales as the key player\u2014which broke back in March 2007.)<\/p>\n\n
The sex scandal, involving allegations of homosexuality and a conservative Republican Senator, generated the most coverage in the two media sectors\u2014cable news and radio\u2014that include the ideological talk shows. In the first two weeks of the story, it accounted for almost one quarter of all the airtime on cable (23%) and radio (22%).<\/p>\n\n
For the entire quarter, the Craig story was the third-biggest topic (5%) on talk radio and on prime time cable (4%), behind only the campaign and the Iraq policy debate.<\/p>\n\n
Following the rule evident so far in talk radio\u2014that it is better to attack the enemy than defend the ally\u2014liberal radio talkers devoted almost twice as much time (8%) to the subject than the conservative hosts (4%). Similarly, MSNBC\u2019s prime-time lineup made Craig\u2019s travails the third biggest story, (at 7%) while it was the eighth-biggest story (at 3%) among Fox\u2019s hosts. CNN was somewhere in the middle (sixth-biggest story at 4%).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was the last week in August when the media first learned of Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig\u2019s June arrest for allegedly propositioning a police officer in the Minneapolis airport. In the weeks that followed, Craig agreed to resign from the Senate, changed his mind, and tried to rescind his guilty plea. By the time 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