Phew: Afghanistan Gets Four Times The Coverage of Tiger Woods, Salahis

by Glynnis MacNicol | 11:51 am, December 8th, 2009

» 3 comments

pej.afghan

It is perhaps a measure of the media cycles of the blogosphere that I consider the latest study from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism on last week’s news coverage to be encouraging. According to the study, 27% of the newshole between Nov. 30 and Dec. 6 was devoted to coverage of Afghanistan. Which makes sense since the President’s speech took place on the 2nd. Though it is interesting (and a not a little disturbing) to note that it is “the largest amount of attention the media have devoted to the war there since the PEJ began monitoring the news in January 2007.” Meanwhile, coverage of the economic crisis accounted for 15%, which actually seems a bit low if only because at the end of the day doesn’t everything come back to the economy?

The point of this, however, is that clocking in at six percent each was coverage of the crashers: Salahis and Tiger Woods, respectively. Yes, six percent is a lot of coverage in the grand scheme of the world’s news (also, more than health care, though I would make the argument health care has received such saturated news coverage the last four months that maybe we all just wanted a break). What the poll does succeed in proving, however, is that despite the fact one glance at any number of websites (including this one) or television news shows, mainstream or otherwise, might lead you to believe that Afghanistan and/or the economy was struggling to be heard through the cacophony of this week’s latest stunt news story, actually they are getting plenty of attention and space. Whether those stories are being read or listened to is another question altogether.

Side note: George Stephanopoulos might want to glance at this graph to get a sense of where his journalistic future lies.

(h/t Michael Calderone)

Afghanistan, barack obama, Health Care Reform, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, The Economy, The Economy Stupid, Tiger Woods

http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

I agree that it’s a good thing Tiger Woods didn’t come out higher, primarily because if you look at the list of the outlets surveyed, they are are all legitimate news sources and I’d really have questions, if a guy running into a tree dominated the Washington Post or Brian Williams’ show.

After all, there’s a lot of articles in a daily newspaper and quite a few minutes in an evening broadcast, it’d be real difficult to fill them with one story that doesn’t effect anyone and only appeals to one segment of the audience.

As for the website, PEJ doesn’t include trashier sites and random blogs. A few of those listed are aggregators and I might classify a couple others as pseudo-aggregators, with the rest being legitimate sources. And again, the newshole is quite large.

Of course, one takeaway from this week’s survey and the specifics of Tiger Woods, it looks to me that the morning shows could do better. Sure, they are a magazine format, but maybe they should step back a little from the tabloid rack.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

Correction: When I said “articles in a daily newspaper”, I meant on the front page.
ireenawagner

While I do understnd and appreciate the article, one should also look at the flip side of this. If the press were invited to earlier and “looser” discussions regarding policy decisions, how would it be reported? Some of the press would be accurate, but some of them would blow things out of proportion or quote things out of context. For every reporter that acts like Edward R Murrow, there is at least a number of them that act like Glenn Beck.
orpin rose