{"id":90601,"date":"2007-07-05T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2007-07-05T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2007\/07\/05\/pej-talk-show-index-june-24-29-2007\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:12:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:12:30","slug":"pej-talk-show-index-june-24-29-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2007\/07\/05\/pej-talk-show-index-june-24-29-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Lou Dobbs Takes a Victory Lap"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n\n

It was Lou Dobbs\u2019s victory lap. On June 29, a day after the Senate applied what appeared to be the coup de grace to the immigration bill, its most vocal media opponent read some congratulatory emails on his CNN show. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThanks Lou, for presenting the views of legal American citizens,\u201d wrote \u201cJoan from Virginia.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe love you Lou. Your hard work paid off. Thank you. Thank you,\u201d enthused \u201cFred from Florida.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThank you Lou Dobbs for leading the charge against this immigration bill,\u201d added \u201cE. from Washington.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

In the weeks between the May 17 introduction of the Senate immigration legislation and its June 28 demise, many hosts\u2014including conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity\u2014mounted an aggressive campaign against the bill. But over the long haul, no one devoted more energy to derailing what he called the \u201camnesty\u201d measure than Dobbs, the veteran CNN personality who has transformed himself from a pinstriped chronicler of the corporate boardroom to a full-blown populist, though he still has the suits. (Critics might use other words to describe him.) <\/p>\n\n

In the last three months, from April 1-June 29, Dobbs devoted more than a quarter (26%) of the airtime on his nightly show to immigration. (That\u2019s almost twice as much attention as he gave to the next leading subject, the Iraq war policy debate.) Last week, the immigration debate was the most popular cable and radio talk topic, filling 24% of the airtime, according to PEJ\u2019s Talk Show Index from June 24-29. And nearly half the week\u2019s talk stories on immigration originated from Dobbs\u2019s program, including the segment in which he basked in the citizen kudos. <\/p>\n\n

While immigration dominated the talk menu, the failed London car bomb plot\u2014which occurred on the last day of the week examined in this Index\u2014was the second-biggest topic (12%). It was a much bigger subject on cable than radio. The controversy over Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s secretive and unprecedented influence over policy in the White House, explored in a Washington Post series, was next at 9%. For liberal critics of the Vice President such as radio\u2019s Randi Rhodes and MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann, the Post\u2019s articles were irresistible ammunition. <\/p>\n\n

With last week largely devoid of major campaign news, the 2008 White House race was the sixth-biggest talk subject (filling 6% of the time, plummeting from 25% the previous week). You have to go back to April 15-20, when the horrific Virginia Tech shooting spree consumed 63% of the talk newshole, to find a week when the campaign got less attention on the talk shows. <\/p>\n\n

The talk universe topic list continues to be somewhat different than the agenda seen in PEJ\u2019s more general News Coverage Index each week. Four subjects that made talk\u2019s top-10 story list failed to register that high in the general news Index. The grisly family murder\/suicide apparently perpetrated by professional wrestler Chris Benoit was the fourth-biggest topic at 7% in talk. Socialite Paris Hilton\u2019s release from jail was the tenth-biggest subject at 3%. The other two subjects that generated more talk attention than general coverage involved the media directly. One was the exchange of words between Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, and conservative commentator Ann Coulter over civility in politics (seventh at 6%). The other was an argument over ideology on the talk airwaves (eighth at 4%). <\/p>\n\n

The Talk Show Index, released each week, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics are most frequently dissected and discussed in the media universe of talk and opinion\u2014a segment of the media that spans across both prime time cable and radio. (See About the Talk Show Index.)<\/a> PEJ\u2019s Talk Show Index includes seven prime time cable shows and five radio talk hosts and is a subset of our News Coverage Index<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Paris Hilton\u2019s return from incarceration and the Benoit tragedy were two very different crime stories that intrigued some talk hosts last week. The Benoit case\u2014in which police say he killed his wife and seven-year-old son before hanging himself\u2014may end up opening a window on the issue of steroids in the physically demanding world of pro wrestling. <\/p>\n\n

On the June 28 edition of MSNBC\u2019s \u201cScarborough Country,\u201d\u2014the program that devoted by far the most attention to the issue\u2014guest host Dan Abrams discussed the subject with pro grapplers \u201cJohnny B. Badd\u201d and \u201cthe Lethal Weapon.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

As the screen displayed the statistic that pro wrestlers have death rates seven times higher than the general population, Abrams said \u201cwe\u2019ve had former wrestlers on this program…and every one of them talks about funerals and the fact that a disproportionate number of wrestlers have died. There\u2019s got to be some explanation for why so many wrestlers are having so many problems.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Most of the talk of Hilton\u2019s June 26 release from jail\u2014following her assertion that she found God and is a changed person\u2014came on the Fox News Channel\u2019s \u201cO\u2019Reilly Factor\u201d and \u201cHannity & Colmes.\u201d (The \u201ccelebutante\u2019s\u201d June 27 interview with CNN\u2019s Larry King also tripled King\u2019s normal audience.) <\/p>\n\n

The Elizabeth Edwards\/Ann Coulter face-off was a media-generated flare-up that started when Edwards called into the June 26 edition of MSNBC\u2019s \u201cHardball\u201d to confront Coulter and ask her \u201cto stop the personal attacks\u201d on her husband, John Edwards, and others. Coulter responded with: \u201cOK, great the wife of a presidential candidate is calling in asking me to stop speaking.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

The next night, the battle continued when John Edwards appeared on \u201cHardball\u201d to declare that \u201cwhen people like Ann Coulter\u2026engage in this kind of hate mongering, you have to stand up to them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Coulter got a hearing on the June 28 \u201cO\u2019Reilly Factor\u201d where she said she was undaunted by the Elizabeth Edwards call. \u201cI\u2019m more of a man than any liberal is,\u201d she declared, \u201cso\u2026I don\u2019t care.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

(For those of you with a more skeptical bent, it was pointed out on both \u201cHardball\u201d and \u201cThe O\u2019Reilly Factor\u201d that Coulter has used the confrontation to sell more of her books and John Edwards has turned the dustup into a fundraising tool.) <\/p>\n\n

Another media-related issue that is generating momentum on talk radio centers around political balance on the airwaves. And it was ignited, in part, by a recent report concluding that conservative hosts overwhelmingly dominate the radio microphones. That has quickly developed into its own ideological argument with some conservatives warning of a return to the Fairness Doctrine, a regulation repealed 20 years ago that required broadcasters to air balancing points of view on controversial public policy issues. <\/p>\n\n

On his June 27 show, Limbaugh referred to his program as one \u201cthat frightens and scares the American left to the point that they want to deny this program Constitutional access to the First Amendment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

A day later, Ed Schultz, one of a much smaller group of successful liberal hosts, said \u201cI can guarantee you folks that no one is out there saying \u2018let\u2019s have the Fairness Doctrine.\u2019\u201d And he blamed conservatives for trying to silence liberal voices. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cHow come I\u2019m still on the air?\u201d Schultz added. \u201cThey don\u2019t want us here.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n\n

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ<\/em> <\/p>\n\n

\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n

Top Ten Stories in the Talk Show Index<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

1. Immigration – 24% <\/address>\n\n
2. UK Terror – 12%
<\/address>\n\n
3. VP Cheney Controversies – 9%<\/address>\n\n
4. Wrestler Crime – 7% <\/address>\n\n
5. Ohio Woman – 6%<\/address>\n\n
6. Campaign 2008 – 6%
<\/address>\n\n
7. Ann Coulter’s Comments – 6%
<\/address>\n\n
8. Fairness Doctrine – 4%<\/address>\n\n
9. Iraq Policy Debate – 3%<\/address>\n\n
10. Paris Hilton – 3% <\/address>\n\n\n <\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

Top Ten Stories in the broader News Coverage Index<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n

1. Immigration – 12% <\/address>\n\n
2. Campaign 2008 – 6%<\/address>\n\n
3. Supreme Court Actions – 6%
<\/address>\n\n
4. UK Terror – 5%<\/address>\n\n
5. VP Cheney Controversies – 5%<\/address>\n\n
6. Lake Tahoe Fire – 5%<\/address>\n\n
7. Events in Iraq – 4%<\/address>\n\n
8. Iraq Policy Debate – 4%<\/address>\n\n
9. Ohio Woman – 3%<\/address>\n\n
10. Texas\/Plains Flooding – 3%<\/address>\n\n

Click here<\/a> to read the methodology behind the Talk Show Index. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The demise of the immigration bill that was so vocally opposed by so many talk hosts dominated the airwaves last week. But the nation’s radio and cable talkers were also interested in Paris Hilton’s freedom, the grisly murder\/suicide spree of a pro wrestler and a nasty dustup between the wife of a Democratic presidential hopeful and a controversial conservative commentator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sub_headline":"PEJ Talk Show Index June 24 - 29, 2007","sub_title":"PEJ Talk Show Index June 24 - 29, 2007","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_api_pending":"","apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_hidden":false,"relatedPosts":[],"reportMaterials":[],"multiSectionReport":[],"package_parts__enabled":false,"package_parts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"bylines":[],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"level_of_effort":[],"primary_audience":[],"information_type":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[458],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[],"research-teams":[527],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-90601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","formats-report","research-teams-journalism"],"label":false,"post_parent":0,"word_count":1277,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2007\/07\/05\/pej-talk-show-index-june-24-29-2007\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"report_materials":"","report_pagination":{"current_post":null,"next_post":null,"previous_post":null,"pagination_items":[]},"parent_info":{"parent_title":"Lou Dobbs Takes a Victory Lap","parent_id":90601},"materialsOrdered":[],"chaptersOrdered":[],"partsOrdered":[],"partsEnabled":false,"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Lou Dobbs Takes a Victory Lap","description":"The demise of the immigration bill that was so vocally opposed by so many talk hosts dominated the airwaves last week. 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