{"id":90762,"date":"2007-03-07T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2007\/03\/07\/pej-news-coverage-index-feb-25-march-2-2007\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:12:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:12:33","slug":"pej-news-coverage-index-feb-25-march-2-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2007\/03\/07\/pej-news-coverage-index-feb-25-march-2-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Wicked Storms, Wobbly Stocks, and Wounded Soldiers Make News"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n

Two dramatic breaking events and two long-simmering story lines were among a list of subjects competing for media attention in an unusually heavy news week, according to PEJ\u2019s News Coverage Index from February 25-March 2. <\/p>\n\n

The breaking news stories were very different kinds of events\u2014tornadoes in the South and a financial plunge on Wall Street. The simmering, slower developing subjects were the growing controversy about treatment of soldiers at home\u2014for the second week running\u2014and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n

They joined two stories that typically dominate the Index\u2014the 2008 Presidential race and the debate over Iraq policy\u2014on the roster of top stories last week.<\/p>\n\n

The devastating March 1 tornadoes that swept through the South and left 20 dead was the fourth biggest story (filling 6% of the overall newshole). The Dow\u2019 s 416-point freefall on February 27\u2014the biggest single day loss since after 9\/11\u2014was right behind as fifth biggest story (6%). <\/p>\n\n

The bulk of the stock plunge coverage occurred on February 27 and 28, and the storms were news for just the last two days of the week. Even so, the level of network TV coverage \u201411% for the storm and 9% for the market drop\u2014helped propel those events onto the top story list for the full week. <\/p>\n\n

At the same time, two issues that are intertwined with the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d but have been largely eclipsed by ongoing Iraq coverage surfaced last week. Triggered by the bombing near Vice President Dick Cheney, reports of a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda earned the conflict in Afghanistan its heaviest coverage of the year and made it last week\u2019s seventh biggest story (at 4%). <\/p>\n\n

And the question of the medical care delivered to our wounded soldiers spilled into two different categories\u2014the Iraq homefront (third biggest story at 6%) and events inside Iraq (sixth story at 5%). <\/p>\n\n

There were two \u201cnews hooks\u201d that accelerated coverage of the war casualties. One was the dramatic reappearance of former ABC anchor Bob Woodruff, who suffered severe head injuries while covering Iraq. The other was the continuing fallout over the Washington Post\u2019s February 18-19 series exposing major problems at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center\u2014with several top Army officials losing their jobs. <\/p>\n\n

John McCain\u2019s announcement of his candidacy on David Letterman\u2019s show, meanwhile, helped make the 2008 presidential campaign, by the narrowest of margins, the top story at 7%. The second-place Iraq policy debate story (6%) was spurred by news that the U.S. will attend a regional conference with Iran and Syria, a decision some of the media played as a reversal of policy. <\/p>\n\n

With the large number of significant stories vying for attention, last week was the first time since PEJ\u2019s Index launched in January that the biggest story failed to fill 10% of the overall newshole. It\u2019s also the first time that the top story and fifth biggest story were separated by a mere percentage point. <\/p>\n\n

Though the Anna Nicole Smith legal mess was the eighth biggest story at 4%, that was the lowest amount of coverage since her February 8 death. But if the Smith saga is slowly slipping from public view, one re-emerging newsmaker was former vice-president Al Gore who was featured in two top 10 stories\u2014the 2008 presidential race and the February 25 Oscar ceremonies (which finished 10th at 3%). <\/p>\n\n

PEJ\u2019s News Coverage Index is a study of the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media. (See a List of Outlets.)<\/a> It is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of major stories and differences among news platforms. (See Our Methodology.)<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n\n

Even though the attack near Cheney on a U.S. base in Afghanistan and the Dow\u2019s dive both occurred on February 27, the trajectories of those stories differed. Much of the subsequent stock market coverage featured Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke\u2019s reassuring February 28 remarks to Congress hat \u201cthere didn’t seem to be any single trigger of the market correction we saw yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Conversely, coverage of the Cheney episode quickly expanded to focus on fears that the situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan was growing much more ominous.<\/p>\n\n

In his February 27 evening news story on the suicide bombing, CBS correspondent David Martin reported that \u201c26,000 American troops are gearing for what is expected to be a spring of heavy fighting against the Taliban, now operating out of virtual safe haven in Pakistan.\u201d In another piece of disquieting news, he added that American officials now fear that Osama bin Laden feels physically secure enough to meet \u201cwith his senior leaders face-to-face and plot attacks on the U.S.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

That dovetailed with a page-1 February 28 New York Times story concluding that the strike near Cheney, \u201cdemonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Until now, the conflict in Afghanistan had never generated more than 2% of the weekly news coverage, half of what we saw last week. But like the escalating U.S. tensions with Iran\u2014which emerged as a major story in mid-February after simmering on the back burner\u2014the prospect of a bloodier conflict in Afghanistan could become a larger and more regular element of the news menu. <\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s not accurate to say that the media have ignored those wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq. But last week, the intensity of that coverage seemed to increase notably\u2014perhaps because of the Post\u2019s Walter Reed investigation. (Newsweek\u2019s cover story, \u201cFailing our Wounded,\u201d included a photo of a female soldier who had lost\u00a0 both legs.) <\/p>\n\n

Now in its second week of sustained coverage, the message last week was that the problems go deeper than Walter Reed Army Hospital, where the Washington Post expose revealed substandard conditions for outpatient care. <\/p>\n\n

During a March 1 story on the military\u2019s ailing medical system, NBC\u2019s newscast included this memorable quote from a veterans\u2019 advocate: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to throw a band-aid on a sunken chest wound. The system is hemorrhaging.\u201d On February 28, Bill O\u2019Reilly began his Fox News Channel show with an appeal to raise funds for the \u201cDisabled Veterans Life Memorial Foundation,\u201d which is working to build a memorial in Washington. <\/p>\n\n

But some of the most dramatic coverage came when Bob Woodruff\u2014who spent 36 days unconscious after being wounded in Iraq\u2014returned to ABC after 13 months. In advance of his special that night, \u201cWorld News Tonight\u201d ran a February 27 piece that showed Woodruff re-learning to speak with a helmet covering his damaged skull. The segment was titled \u201cThe homecoming.\u201d (The next night, Woodruff reported for the newscast about the growing number of veterans with brain injuries.) <\/p>\n\n

A comeback of a different sort made news last week when Al Gore\u2019s global warming documentary, \u201cAn Inconvenient Truth,\u201d won an Oscar on February 25. That, not surprisingly, triggered some fresh speculation about Gore\u2019s 2008 presidential intentions. The former veep played along, performing in an Oscar telecast bit (watched by about 40 million people) in which he feigned a presidential announcement. <\/p>\n\n

That level of exposure meant that the man who jokingly says \u201cI used to be the next President of the United States,\u201d was\u2014even if only temporarily\u2014fair game for pundits. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cIn the entertainment world, if Al Gore is your highlight, you\u2019re in big trouble,\u201d snapped radio talker Rush Limbaugh the next day as he trashed the Oscar show as hopelessly boring. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for his varicose veins, the guy would be totally colorless.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More so than any time this year, no single story dominated the news last week. But a number of sudden events and slowly developing subjects found their way into the headlines. Anna Nicole Smith faded, Al Gore re-emerged, and Bob Woodruff came back home to ABC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sub_headline":"PEJ News Coverage Index Feb. 25 - March 2, 2007","sub_title":"PEJ News Coverage Index Feb. 25 - March 2, 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-90762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","formats-report","research-teams-journalism"],"label":false,"post_parent":0,"word_count":1256,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/journalism\/2007\/03\/07\/pej-news-coverage-index-feb-25-march-2-2007\/","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":"Wicked Storms, Wobbly Stocks, and Wounded Soldiers Make News","parent_id":90762},"materialsOrdered":[],"chaptersOrdered":[],"partsOrdered":[],"partsEnabled":false,"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Wicked Storms, Wobbly Stocks, and Wounded Soldiers Make News","description":"More so than any time this year, no single story dominated the news last week. But a number of sudden events and slowly developing subjects found their way into the headlines. Anna Nicole Smith faded, Al Gore re-emerged, and Bob Woodruff came back home to ABC.","og_title":"Wicked Storms, Wobbly Stocks, and Wounded Soldiers Make News","og_description":"More so than any time this year, no single story dominated the news last week. But a number of sudden events and slowly developing subjects found their way into the headlines. Anna Nicole Smith faded, Al Gore re-emerged, and Bob Woodruff came back home to ABC.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{"prc-image-alt-text":{"status":"incomplete","message":"6 images are missing alt text.","data":{"count":6}},"prc-about-this-research":{"status":"incomplete","message":"Add an \"About this research\" details block.","data":null},"prc-paragraph-count":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 24 paragraphs.","data":{"count":24}},"prc-internal-link":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 2 internal links.","data":{"count":2}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130600,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90762\/revisions\/130600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"level_of_effort","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/level_of_effort?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"primary_audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary_audience?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"information_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/information_type?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=90762"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=90762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}