Barack Obama may have toured his new home with President Bush, but much of last week’s media coverage also focused on two women who ran losing campaigns for the Executive Branch. With Hillary Clinton, the speculation was whether she would become the top diplomat in the new Obama Administration. With Sarah Palin, the question was whether she would emerge as the top Republican.

By the end of the week, Palin and Clinton were the second and third-leading newsmakers of the week from Nov. 10-16, trailing only the President elect.

With the financial crisis certain to be topic No. 1 for President Obama, the country’s weakened economy rivaled the Presidential transition as the top story of the week, with nothing else coming close. That was driven in part by a change in the Bush administration’s bailout strategy that seemed to suggest an even grimmer economic prognosis, and Congress arguing over a controversial bailout for the failing auto industry.

These are among the findings of the first full post-election week of the News Coverage Index for Nov. 10-16, a weekly study of the media agenda from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Transition Watch

For the week, the media narrative of the incoming Obama Administration was the No. 1 story, but only barely, filling 24% of the overall newshole studied. Most of the coverage of the new presidency (about two-thirds) was devoted to three major storylines—the logistics of the transfer of power from Bush to Obama, predictions about the tone and substance of an Obama presidency and speculation about who might populate the top jobs in that administration.

By the end of the week, much of this last storyline was dominated by word that Hillary Clinton—Obama’s erstwhile rival—was a serious candidate for the Secretary of State job. The story in the Nov. 15 Washington Post viewed the news as part of an Obama strategy “to reach out to former rivals and consider unexpected moves as he assembles his cabinet.” When Obama mentioned he was reading about Abraham Lincoln during the 60 Minutes interview on Nov. 16, correspondent Steve Kroft said the 16^th President “put a lot of his political enemies in his cabinet.” Obama responded coyly, that he found Lincoln to be “a very wise man.”

Yet by the end of the weekend, speculation mounted in media accounts that Bill Clinton’s complex financial dealings could pose a potential threat to his wife’s bid to become Secretary of State.

The Clinton buzz was part of a larger effort by the pundits last week to predict how the incoming President, a liberal who preached moderation, would govern. When asked about that on the Nov. 10 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, Democratic strategist Steve McMahon seemed to be counseling Obama to mix daring with centrism. He advocated “a bold economic move,” while warning that “the middle decided this election and…the swing voters are waiting for him to address their concerns.”

The big story on the logistics front was Obama’s Nov. 10 visit to the White House. Given his historic status as the first Black man to take up residence in the White House and his relentless attacks on Bush during the campaign, the meeting offered more than mere ceremony—and generated considerable attention. “Bushes show Obamas inside” read the headline on a Nov. 11 Arkansas Democrat Gazette story illustrated by a photo of the two men chatting in the Oval Office.

Another 10% of last week’s newshole was devoted to a continued discussion of the results of the Nov. 4 election. Roughly three-quarters of that coverage was consumed by two themes—a postmortem on the voters’ verdict and a debate on how the Republican Party should resurrect itself. In both narratives, Sarah Palin played a prominent role, largely by making herself far more available to the media than she had been during the campaign. Indeed, the week may well be remembered by the intensity of Palin’s interviews—with CNN, NBC, Fox News and her appearance at the governors conference in Florida.

In an interview with Fox News, Palin talked about praying, asking God, “don’t let me miss the open door” that might present future opportunities. On NBC, she characterized the political process she had just been through as “pretty brutal.”

On the Nov. 11 edition of CNN’s Situation Room, correspondent Brian Todd called it “a media blitz” with Palin holding forth “on why Republicans lost.” But the future, rather than the past, was on Palin’s mind when she took a lead role at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Florida. (There was a pretty surreal moment there when a Palin press conference ended abruptly after four questions.)

A Nov. 13 New York Times account of the governors’ event reported that Palin told her fellow governors, a group that may include some 2012 rivals, to “Let us resolve not to be the negative party. Let us build our case with actions, not just with words.”

Newsmakers of the Week

Although John McCain broke his post-election silence in a jokey interview with Jay Leno last week, Palin significantly overshadowed him. She was a lead newsmaker in more than 3% of last week’s stories examined by PEJ, meaning she appeared in at least 50% of those stories. Clinton was very close behind, but McCain lagged well back, showing up as a lead newsmaker in 1% of last week’s coverage. By week’s end, even some friendly commentators were counseling Palin to adopt a lower profile.

The Economic Crisis

The Nov. 13 edition of USA Today had some ominous news on the financial front. Under the headline, “Treasury rethinks Wall St. bailout,” the paper reported on the decision to “scrap plans to buy troubled assets and focus on directly injecting money into the banking system.”

“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the government’s shifting plans reflect an economy that is in far worst shape that it was just a few weeks ago,” the story added.

In filling 24% of the newshole the week of Nov. 10-16, the economic crisis tripled from the previous week’s coverage and generated its highest level of media attention since early October. Much of that news was bad. About half of the coverage related to three narratives—the impact on the global economy (driven by the international summit in Washington), the housing and financial crisis, and the details of the federal bailout plan.

There was also a litany of stories of troubled companies and industries. Among the events that made headlines was the news that Circuit City was going bankrupt, that American Express might be seeking a $3.5 billion federal rescue and that AIG’s bailout had been revamped.

The big insurer got coverage for another reason—also unwelcome. On the Nov. 12 broadcast of ABC’s Good Morning America, investigative correspondent Brian Ross, crediting an ABC affiliate station in Phoenix, showed hidden camera footage of AIG executives “hosting a lavish sales meeting” for financial planners at a swanky resort. “Hotel staff was told to keep AIG’s involvement secret,” Ross noted, and public reaction was largely one of outrage. The story featured Ross reading angry viewer emails like this one with a porcine theme: “These guys are overpaid, overfed pigs at the trough.”

The troubled U.S. automotive industry, a narrative fueled largely by the debate over whether to bail out car makers, was another major part of the story last week. It alone filled 5% of the newshole studied. While many Democrats, including Obama, have voiced support for some kind of package, the coverage made clear that opposition was building across the aisle. A fair amount of the business coverage and commentaries of the week focused on the pros and cons of bailing out the long-struggling automakers, whose problems are perceived to be more of their own making and far more structural than the financial markets.

“The prospect of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled [yesterday] as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition during a lame-duck session next week,” the Nov. 14 New York Times reported.

In the continuing coverage of the meltdown that began in mid-September, Detroit became the new front line last week.

The Rest of the Week’s News

Four topics that were in some ways interrelated—the new administration (24% of the newshole), the financial crisis (24%), the Presidential election results (10%) and the U.S. auto industry (5%)—were the top stories in PEJ’s News Coverage Index for Nov. 10-16.

The No. 5 story, at 3% of the newshole, was events related to the Veterans Day commemoration. Next came the raging wildfires fires in Southern California that accounted for another 3%. But that is just a fraction of the coverage (38% of the newshole) generated by the destructive California fires about this time a year ago, during the week of Oct. 21-26, 2007. The situation inside Iraq, including a flare-up of violence in Baghdad, was No. 7 at 2% of the newshole.

The rest of last week’s top-10 story list includes Congressional elections, (2%) with much of the focus on the three still unresolved Senate races in Minnesota, Georgia, and Alaska. The issue of same-sex marriage, which was legalized in Connecticut last week, was No. 9 at 2% of the newshole. And health news, primarily findings that anti-cholesterol drugs can lower heart attack risks even in people with normal cholesterol levels, was No. 10 at 1%.

About the NCI

PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 48 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,300 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on "newshole," or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV. (See Our Methodology.) In addition, these reports also include a rundown of the week’s leading newsmakers, a designation given to people or institutions who account for at least 50% of a given story.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

When the campaign was finally over, the media almost immediately viewed Barack Obama’s victory as a transformational event, and a subject that had been in some ways taboo moved front and center—race.

“Obama Overcomes,” observed the Tuscaloosa Alabama News. “Dream Realized,” said the Brockton Massachusetts Enterprise. “Race is History,” emphatically declared the Beaumont Texas Enterprise.

Another common theme in the torrent of analysis and reporting that followed Obama’s win over John McCain Nov. 4 was disarray in a Republican Party with a damaged brand and diminished base. And that seemed to be epitomized nowhere more clearly than in the widely publicized comments belittling Sarah Palin, attributed to anonymous McCain aides, and the subsequent counterattack by Palin.

While some commentary and reporting also suggested the nation was on the cusp of a major political realignment, the media verdict on that was more mixed.

And one other major storyline emerged in the media last week. With the political press corps still fully mobilized and a deepening economic crisis, the narrative pivoted instantly to speculation about the personalities and policies that would drive the new Obama administration. Within a day, the transition from one Presidential era to another was in full swing.

These are among the findings of the weekly News Coverage Index, a comprehensive analysis of the press coverage the week of Nov. 3-9 from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The final week of a campaign, the presidential election utterly dominated the news agenda. Campaign and election related themes combined to make up more than two-thirds (69%) of the newshole studied. Combined, that would make election and its aftermath the largest single event in the 22 months since the Index began. When you add in the additional stories connected to the Nov. 4 voting—including the U.S. House and Senate races and ballot questions—that number swells to almost 80%.

Three main election themes dominated the coverage. The end of the presidential campaign—which encompassed coverage on just two days, was the No. 1 story, accounting for 27% of the week’s newshole. Coverage of the election results—including straight reporting and analysis—was No. 2, filling another 21%. And coverage of the incoming Obama administration—which began on Nov. 5 and looked forward—was right behind, also accounting for 21% of the newshole.

The News Coverage Index is PEJ’s running content analysis of media coverage from 48 different news outlets from five different media sectors, print, online, network, cable and radio. During the election year, PEJ added special coding to more closely examine coverage of the race for President and renamed the work the Campaign Coverage Index. The CCI measured both the nature of the campaign narrative and the amount of coverage devoted to each candidate. (This “race for exposure” was measured by the number of stories in which a candidate plays a significant role—as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story—or a main newsmaker role—at least 50% of the story.) This week’s analysis includes the last two days of the campaign, Monday and Tuesday of last week, and includes some of this data. As such, it represents the final CCI report.

The Presidential Election Results Narrative

As soon as the votes were counted on Nov. 4, the media began trying to figure out the lessons. Three themes—campaign post-mortems, the historic significance of the vote, and an examination of demographic and voting trends—accounted for almost two-thirds of the election results newshole.

One conclusion permeated much of the reporting—that voters had effectively sent the Republican Party back to the drawing board. In the Nov. 6 CBS newscast, anchor Katie Couric ventured that the GOP is “in a bit of an identity crisis as to where to go.” “They’re going to have to find a stronger, broader argument,” added analyst Jeff Greenfield, “inclusive, but also something that speaks to the gut needs of voters…”

As a Nov. 5 Wall Street Journal headline put it: “Republicans Ponder Path to Renewal After Party Suffers a Harsh Setback.”

The media analysis, however, was far more split on whether the election signaled a long-term political realignment. Typical was a Nov. 6 Philadelphia Inquirer story headlined, “And now, deciding what Obama’s election means.” The article stated that “the debate over how much the political center of American life has shifted will be waged both between the two parties and within them, and the answers will take time to emerge.”

There was less doubt when it came to the social and racial significance of the Obama victory. Here, the media verdict was unabashedly emotional and unequivocal.

“Obama Reaches The Mountaintop,” declared the headline in the Newark Star-Ledger, a reference to one of Rev. Martin Luther King’s most famous speeches.

“How do you measure the magnitude of a moment such as this, the election of the first African-American president?” asked ABC anchor Charles Gibson at the top of his Nov. 5 newscast, as a collage of emotional celebratory scenes rolled across the screen.

A story posted on CNN.com described Obama’s victory as a “personal triumph” for some of those who had taken part in the country’s early civil rights battles.

“Some [white southerners] risked social rejection for renouncing the bigotry of their parents,” the story asserted. “Others risked their lives while leading civil rights campaigns in the Deep South. Some almost lost their belief in the inherent goodness of America because they saw so many innocent people die.” One of the unlikely Obama supporters mentioned in that piece was Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of the late Alabama Governor and segregationist George Wallace.

The New Obama Administration Narrative

Within a day, however, given the supersonic news cycle, the celebratory transformative post-mortems quickly gave way to coverage of the makeup and priorities of the new President. The tenor of the coverage generally seemed to suggest a sense of urgency. With two wars and an economic crisis, the media depicted a transition that required an unusual level of coordination between incoming and outgoing administrations.

A Nov. 9 Washington Post story—quoting an historian who compared Obama’s challenge to that facing Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 or Abraham Lincoln in 1860—reported that Obama aides were already preparing to work next to Bush administration Treasury officials.

The biggest chunk of the coverage of the new administration, about one-third, focused on potential Obama appointments, with everyone from Colin Powell to Caroline Kennedy being bandied about. About the same level of coverage also focused on the economic policy agenda and speculation about the priorities and ideology of the new administration.

When it came to that first storyline, appointments, the only actual news came with the selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, a move that triggered considerable coverage of both his political skills and fiery personality.

One such story, in the Nov. 7 Arkansas Democrat Gazette, reported that “Some Congressional Republican leaders are critical of the partisanship Emanuel brought to his job in the Democratic leadership.” Emanuel supporter, former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, responded by insisting the incoming chief of staff was a changed man.

“The Rahm of 15 years ago is very different from the Rahm of today,” the story quoted Daley as saying. “The young Rahm was pretty full of himself. This Rahm is very different.”

When it came to the question of the new Administration’s policy agenda, much of that focused on Obama’s plans for the economy, a subject that was very much in the center of his Nov. 7 press conference. And some coverage examined the kind of leadership he might offer in troubled times—often without drawing any clear conclusions.

“What kind of decision maker and leader Mr. Obama will be remains unclear even to many of his supporters,” said a Nov. 5 New York Times story. “His performance under the harsh lights of the campaign trail suggests a figure with remarkable coolness and confidence under enormous pressure, yet also one who rarely veers off the methodical path he lays out.”

The 2008 Presidential Campaign Narrative

All this came after the voting. The last two days of the campaign itself were still the top overall story the week of Nov. 3-9. As had been the case in the two previous weeks, the biggest component of the campaign storyline was the battle over the crucial swing states, many of which went to Obama on Nov. 4. All told, themes concerning the horse race aspect accounted for more than one-third of the week’s campaign newshole.

And as the tactical and strategic and polling stories came to dominate the waning hours of the campaign, policy questions became an afterthought. For the week of Nov. 3-9, issue differences between Obama and McCain accounted for only about 5% of all the campaign coverage. That includes the combined total for such subjects as the economy, terrorism, energy and Iraq

In the last two days of the race for the White House, Obama once again generated more coverage than McCain. He was a significant or dominant factor in 60% of the campaign stories compared with 50% for McCain.

Although McCain had pulled even with Obama in the battle for exposure from mid-September through mid-October, the Democrat generated significantly more coverage than his rival during the course of the entire general election season. From mid-June through Election Day, Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 66% of the campaign stories compared with 53% for McCain.

Throughout this long campaign, the Illinois Senator consistently proved to be the top newsmaker. Not only did he generate more coverage than McCain in the general election, but during the Democratic primary period—from Jan. 1 through June 9, 2008—he also received more attention than Hillary Clinton, by a margin of 55% to 48%.

And now, in the rest of the week’s news:

With about 80% of the newshole focused on the election and the transition, there was little news left over. Indeed, only three of the top 10 story lines last week did not involve some aspect of the Nov. 4 elections. Much of that was taken up by the economy. The continuing financial crisis was No. 4 and filled 8% of the newshole studied in PEJ’s News Coverage Index. That’s down from 13% of the newshole the previous week as coverage of the economic crunch has steadily decreased since peaking in late September. The other two stories make the top 10 list last week were the civil war in the Congo and the immigration debate, both of which accounted for 1% of the newshole.

The front page of the Washington Post Nov. 2 was dominated by a multi-colored graphic located below the headline, “McCain’s Challenge: An Uphill Climb to 270.” The chart—which calculated electoral map math—grouped states that were “solid” for Obama and McCain, states that were “leaning” toward either one and states that were “up for grabs.” The verdict: If Obama simply carries the states in which he is favored, he would end up with 291 electoral votes, 21 more than needed for victory.

It was only one of many such maps in the last week. If there ever is a time when campaigns are horse races, it is in the final days, and coverage was indeed largely about the contest itself. In the week from Oct. 27-Nov. 2, the top storyline in the media, was coverage of the contest for crucial battleground states, filling 16% of the campaign newshole studied, according to the Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The battle over swing states was also No.1 the previous week, but at a smaller 10% of the coverage.

Yet the fight over Missouri, Ohio, and Florida is just the tip of the iceberg. When you add other strategic narratives—most notably, head-to-head polls (at 5%), candidate attacks (4%), ads, including Obama’s 30-minute “infomercial,” (3%) and electoral vote arithmetic (3%), attention to the horse race accounted for about one-third of last week’s campaign coverage. That’s up modestly over the previous week’s horse race coverage and a significant jump from that of the week of Oct. 13-19. And while the media were ever vigilant for signs of a tightening race, the overarching narrative was that Obama was the clear, and possibly even overwhelming, favorite to win.

One story not specifically in the strategy and tactics category was nonetheless widely interpreted as another sign of political problems for the GOP ticket. Criticism of and dissension within the McCain campaign, including stories that featured an anonymous McCain advisor calling Sarah Palin a “diva,” accounted for another 2% of the campaign newshole.

An additional 13% of the last week’s coverage was related to the process of voting. Most of that narrative was made up of stories highlighting concerns about potential problems in the voting booth, ranging from long voting lines in Florida to the status of homeless voters in Ohio. That theme accounted for 8% of the newshole and was the No. 2 campaign storyline of the week. Reports about early voting, reportedly quite heavy in many states, filled another 5%.

Thus, the horse race, voting issues, and dissension among Republicans combined to make up about half of the campaign newshole last week.

The candidates’ stands on crucial policy issues played a smaller but still significant role in the final week, accounting for 14% of the campaign newshole—down from 17% the previous week. And much of this centered on McCain’s closing argument against Obama’s economic priorities. The top issue by far was the general economy (8%) with health care well behind at 2% and the response to the fiscal crisis, so large a few weeks ago, also at 2%. And those numbers tell an interesting story.

As the calendar has moved closer to Nov. 4 and further away from the shock of the mid-September Wall Street implosion, the candidates have reverted to traditional economic messages, talking more about general economic policy and less about the specifics of the immediate crisis. For the last two weeks, coverage of the candidates’ broad economic differences has outstripped news of their responses to the economic crisis by about 4-1, with McCain hitting Obama on wealth redistribution and Obama linking McCain to the economic policies of the Bush Administration.

When it comes to quantity of coverage, Obama appears to have regained his once substantial edge over McCain. From Oct. 27-Nov. 2, Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 70% of the campaign stories compared with 52% for McCain. That’s the second week in a row in which Obama has enjoyed a solid lead in coverage after a five-week period when McCain had grabbed an equal share of the headlines. For a while, a popular idea among pundits was that this campaign was largely about Obama. In recent weeks, it may be more accurate to say that that campaign coverage about Obama’s lead in the polls.

These findings are part of PEJ’s running content analysis of media coverage, called the News Coverage Index (NCI). During the election year, PEJ has added special coding to more closely examine coverage of the race for President and renamed the work the Campaign Coverage Index. (The full NCI data appear at the bottom of this report.) The CCI measures both the nature of the campaign narrative and the amount of coverage devoted to each candidate. The race for exposure is measured by the number of stories in which a candidate plays a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). The campaign storyline of the week—the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage—are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole.

Overall, the presidential campaign filled 54% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index from Oct. 27-Nov. 2. That represents a slight uptick from the previous two weeks when the election was at 52% (Oct. 20-26) and 51% (Oct. 13-19). The race for the White House was the dominant story in all five media sectors, most notably in cable, where it accounted for 84% of the airtime studied, and on the radio airwaves, at 65%. Election coverage last week surpassed that of the economic crisis by about a 4-1 margin.

The coverage also contradicted the old adage that candidates try to convey a positive message in the closing days of a campaign. Last week saw both rivals hammering away at familiar themes and each other on the single most important issue in voters’ minds—the economy.

Dueling reports on Anderson Cooper’s Oct. 28 CNN program illustrated this. A piece about an Obama rally in Virginia showed the Democrat declaring that “John McCain’s ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy towards a cliff.” Next came footage of McCain telling a Pennsylvania crowd that his opponent “favors higher taxes...Senator Obama is running to be the redistributionist in chief.”

If McCain was gaining traction with that message, it wasn’t evident in much of the horse race coverage during the week. An Oct. 31 Bloomberg News story posted on Google News laid out a tough prognosis for the Republican’s team.

McCain “goes into the campaign's final weekend a bigger underdog than any victorious candidate in a modern election,” the story stated. “National polls show [Obama] leading by an average of 6 percentage points, and battleground polls show Obama ahead in more than enough states to win the decisive 270 Electoral College votes.” It then quoted political analyst Larry Sabato declaring, “This election is cooked and done, it's in the warming tray.''

The Nov. 2 front-page Washington Post story was only slightly more equivocal. Citing a Post-ABC News tracking poll that had Obama up by nine points, the story said that McCain “faces an enormous task in trying to prevent Barack Obama from winning the White House and becoming the first African American president in the nation’s history.”

The press was less certain about another matter however. Before any election verdict can be rendered, the votes have to be counted. And a good deal of last week’s campaign coverage was about potential problems not in the polls, but at the polls.

There was, for example, this sobering conversation on the Oct. 29 edition of PBS’ NewsHour between senior correspondent Gwen Ifill and two lawyers familiar with election law, Barbara Arnwine and Ben Ginsberg.

When Ifill asked the basic question about the country’s ability to process what by many estimates would be unprecedented turnout at its voting places—“are we ready?”—she got the same answer from both guests.

“No,” said Arnwine. “With a record turnout and continued underinvestment by our states and our federal government on election procedures…we are not ready yet.”

“No we’re not,” concurred Ginsberg, who cited inevitable “human error” as well as the “great inconsistency among the counties [that control the voting process] in a given state, to say nothing of between the states.”

Who knows how big a story that could turn out to be on Election Day?

And now, in the rest of the week’s news:

The No. 2 story from Oct. 27-Nov. 2 was the continued fallout from the economic crisis, which accounted for 13% of the newshole, a number that is lower than it had been in recent weeks. That topic generated the most coverage (19% of the newshole) in the newspaper and online sectors. But coverage of the financial meltdown and credit crunch has been steadily decreasing. It was at 20% of the newshole the previous week and as recently as four weeks ago, the topic accounted for 36% of the overall coverage.

The third-biggest story of the week, at 2%, was about Congressional scandals, specifically the conviction of veteran Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, on corruption-related charges. That was followed, also at 2%, by the situation in Iraq. And the No. 5 story of the week was news of the killings of the mother, brother and seven-year-old nephew of actress and singer Jennifer Hudson.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

 

 

Campaign Storylines of the Week

	Total Percent of Campaign Newshole
Swing State Strategy	15.7%
Voting Issues	8.5
Economy as an Issue	8.1
Early Voting	4.8
McCain v. Obama Polls	4.6
Attacks by Candidates	4.2
Total Number of Campaign Stories = 656

 

Rank	Story	Percent of Newshole
1	2008 Campaign	54%
2	Financial Crisis/ Fed Bailout	13
3	Congressional Political Corruption Scandals	2
4	Events in Iraq	2
5	Jennifer Hudson's Family Killed	2
6	Baseball World Series	1
7	Afghanistan	1
8	Congo Civil War	1
9	Pakistan	1
10	2008 Congressional Campaigns	1

Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.

Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index

When Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on the Oct. 19 edition of Meet the Press, it was a headline-grabbing event that drove the next day’s news cycle. By midweek, however, the story had virtually vanished. When Joe Biden said that an international crisis would “test the mettle” of a new President Obama, the McCain camp quickly produced an ad jumping on the perceived gaffe. But that episode accounted for only about blip of the week’s campaign coverage (about 1%).

Even Joe the Plumber—the Ohio man introduced at the Oct. 15 debate who instantly became a household name—edged toward anonymity last week, accounting for only 1% of the campaign coverage, one-eighth the attention he received the previous week, despite becoming a staple of McCain’s stump speech and a focus of his new ads.

In the final days of the race for president, seemingly nothing but the algebra of the electoral map appears to have staying power.

As the days tick down toward Nov. 4 with the momentum clearly tilting toward Obama—and with the press searching intently for developments that could change that dynamic—stories appear to have a shorter shelf life, often flashing across the media radar screen in a matter of hours rather than days.

Indeed, no single narrative dominated last week’s coverage. The top storyline, the fight over battleground states, accounted for 10% of the campaign newshole from Oct. 20-26, according to the Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project For Excellence in Journalism. That’s the lowest level of coverage for any leading weekly narrative since the general election campaign began in early June.

In a campaign and media environment now focused strongly on the shape of the race, one staple of weekly coverage is the attention to strategy and tactics. Coverage of swing state battles (10% of the newshole), polls (6%), and fundraising (5%), and some other related storylines accounted for about one-quarter of last week’s newshole. Add in the Powell endorsement (at 6%), which was frequently discussed in terms of its political potency, and that broad theme fills almost 30% of the coverage.

Last week, policy debates and issues accounted for another 17% of the coverage. The broader U.S economy—including differences in tax policy and McCain’s sharpened line of attack that Obama favors redistributing wealth—was the top storyline in that category (at 8%). At the same time, coverage of the candidates’ reactions to the financial crisis that struck with hurricane force in mid-September dropped all the way to 2%.

In the second half of September, by contrast, the economic crisis utterly dominated election coverage. By last week, it had almost disappeared. Three weeks ago, the increasingly harsh and personal attacks emanating from the candidates represented the No. 1 campaign story. Last week, the rhetoric was still sharp, but the coverage was down to 2%. Two weeks ago, the third and final presidential debate was the leading campaign storyline. Last week, that aftermath of that event was a statistical non-story.

One candidate did gain some ground over the other in the media. In the competition for exposure, Obama was a significant or dominant factor in 61% of the campaign stories from Oct. 20-26, compared with 50% for McCain. That’s the Democrat’s largest advantage in weekly press attention in seven weeks, a lead somewhat attributable to the coverage—filling 4% of the newshole—of his visit to his ailing grandmother in Hawaii.

Thanks in part to the news that the campaign spent $150,000 on her wardrobe, Sarah Palin registered in 22% of the coverage last week, up from only 8% the previous week. And despite the flap over his gaffe, Biden was a dominant or significant factor in only 5% of the coverage.

These findings are part of PEJ’s running content analysis of media coverage, called the News Coverage Index (NCI). During the election year, PEJ has added special coding to more closely examine coverage of the race for President and renamed the work the Campaign Coverage Index. (The full NCI data appear at the bottom of this report.) The CCI measures both the nature of the campaign narrative and the amount of coverage devoted to each candidate. The race for exposure is measured by the number of stories in which a candidate plays a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). The campaign storyline of the week—the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage—are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole.

Overall, the presidential campaign accounted for 52% of the newshole from Oct. 20-26 as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. (That is virtually the same as the previous week’s total of 51%). The election was the No. 1 story in all five media sectors and exceeded 50% of the newshole on network news (52%), in radio (60%) and on cable news, where it accounted for 79% of the airtime studied. For the second straight week, the campaign generated more than twice as much coverage as the economic crisis. But it was the transitory nature of nearly everything that stood out.

At the beginning of last week, Obama’s endorsement from former Secretary of State Colin Powell—which potentially could have eased some concerns about the Democrat’s national security credentials—was a leading campaign narrative.

The front page of the Oct. 20 edition of USA Today, like many media outlets, touched on the possible political impact, noting that “The long-anticipated announcement, which came with praise for Republican John McCain but harsh criticism of his negative attacks, gave Democrat Obama perhaps the campaign’s most coveted endorsement.”

But if the McCain camp had to cope with an unwelcome endorsement, it got something of a gift when Biden—with his history of verbal miscues—seemed to raise the experience issue anew by predicting that Obama would be tested by a foreign policy crisis within the first six months of taking office.

In an Oct. 21 interview on MSNBC, correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Obama supporter and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle about the comment. When Daschle said Powell’s support “says all you need to know about how we can size up Barack Obama’s capacity for leadership and strength,” Mitchell responded that “You guys are lucky that you have the Powell endorsement…to take the sting out of what Joe Biden said.”

To the extent the dialogue focused on the economy last week, both campaigns pounded out now familiar themes, with McCain accusing Obama of a socialist approach to wealth redistribution and Obama claiming that McCain’s policies favor the wealthy over the working class. In an Oct. 20 ABC evening news story comparing the two men’s plans, reporter Bill Weir concluded that families making $50,000 or $100,000 a year would pay slightly less under Obama, but warned that both candidates would drive up the national debt.

“No matter what your tax bracket,” he added, “it is a case of vote now, pay later.”

But the biggest narrative of the week was related to the horse race. And as the candidates entered the homestretch, an Oct. 23 CBS Evening News story focused largely on the turf on which they are running.

“A sea of 35,000 supporters greeted Barack Obama in downtown Indianapolis this afternoon, physical evidence that one of the most reliably Republican states in the nation is suddenly very much in play, very late in the game,” said correspondent Dean Reynolds. “By themselves, big crowds prove little, but where Obama is drawing them now is impressive.”

And now, in the rest of the week’s news:

After the campaign, the No. 2 story overall last week was the financial crisis, which accounted for 20% of the newshole from Oct. 20-26, down modestly from 23% the previous week. As has been the pattern for the past two weeks, the election has clearly re-emerged as the dominant story after losing top billing in late September and early October. The economic meltdown got the most coverage last week in the online sector, at 28% of the newshole.

The No. 3 story, at 2% of the newshole, was about the 2008 Congressional races, with some of the focus on speculation about potential Democratic gains on Nov. 4. That was followed closely by coverage of the U.S. economy not directly related to the Wall Street implosion and credit crunch (also at 2%). The No. 5 story, at 2% as well, involved the situation inside Iraq.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

 

Campaign Storylines of the Week

	Total Percent of Campaign Newshole
Swing State Strategy	9.6%
Economy as an Issue	8.2
McCain v. Obama Polls	6.1
Colin Powell Endorses Obama	5.9
Campaign Fundraising	4.6
Obama Visits his Grandmother	4.1
Foreign Policy	3.8
Total Number of Campaign Stories = 649

 

Rank	Story	Percent of Newshole
1	2008 Campaign	52%
2	Financial Crisis/ Fed Bailout	20
3	2008 Congressional Campaigns	2
4	U.S. Economy	2
5	Events in Iraq	2
6	Afghanistan	2
7	Baseball Playoffs/ World Series	1
8	Gas/ Oil Prices	1
9	U.S. Domestic Terrorism and Efforts to Combat	1
10	Iraq Homefront	1

Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.

Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index

Along with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Pastor John Hagee, former radical William Ayers, and Alaska Trooper Mike Wooten, add another name to the list of those who rose to grab, or perhaps be thrust into, 15 minutes of fame in the 2008 election narrative.

Last week, an Ohio plumber, cited by John McCain and mentioned some two dozen times during the Oct. 15 presidential debate, became an instant star. And while that star was quickly fading, it burned bright enough from Oct. 13-19, to make the saga of Joe the Plumber the No. 3 campaign storyline of the week (filling 8% of the election newshole) according to the Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The final and perhaps most combative presidential debate of the campaign was the No. 1 campaign storyline (at 18% of the news hole). And even though both candidates produced new economic proposals costing an estimated $100 billion or so, coverage of their response to the financial meltdown barely edged out the plumber (at 9% of the coverage).

As it turned out, Plumber Joe’s first name is Samuel and he is not a licensed plumber. But his emergence as a celebrity seems reflective of a media narrative that has alighted on some unlikely players, in this case perhaps in the hopes of a twist in a campaign narrative that seems, at least in the media’s mind, to be hardening.

The coverage is also taking on an increasingly tactical lens in the final days. Last week, attention to tactics and strategy—including McCain’s invocation of the plumber to represent the working man—accounted for 26% of the newshole, making that general theme the biggest component of the week’s election coverage. Coverage of these strategic aspects of the race included the fight over key battleground states (7%) and the parade of polls, including numerous daily tracking surveys, at 5%.

Another category closely connected to the horse race involves the increasingly sharp attacks defining the closing days of the campaign. Last week, themes connected to this more negative twist to the race filled another 8% of the newshole.

In addition 8% more of the campaign narrative was devoted to possible election irregularities. A good deal of this related to allegations of voter registration fraud by the activist group ACORN, a McCain line of attack as he tried to link Obama with ACORN.

How much coverage last week was about major policy issues? The economic crisis and elements of the economy not directly related to that crisis combined for 13%. After that, all other policy discussions accounted for a total of 3% of the newshole. The subjects of health care, terrorism and security issues, Iraq, and Afghanistan, each accounted for less than 1% of the election coverage.

When it came to the competition for exposure last week, the presidential candidates were virtually even, as they have been for the last several weeks. Obama registered as a significant or dominant newsmaker in 71% of the stories compared with 69% for McCain. And in keeping with the trend since the Oct. 2 vice-presidential debate, the running mates are now very much secondary to the men at the top of the ticket. That has often been the case for Joe Biden, who was a significant or dominant factor in only 3% of last week’s stories. But it’s now also true of Palin, who registered in 8% of the coverage, her lowest level since she was introduced as McCain’s choice on Aug. 29.

Indeed last week, the two running mates took a back seat to the newest media phenom in the 2008 campaign, Joe the Plumber. Joe, or Sam, was a lead newsmaker—meaning he appeared in at least 50% of a story—more often than Biden or Palin last week.

How long he will remain a “shooting star,” as an ABC news report put it, is open to question. Still, the McCain team has continued to make him a talking point on the campaign trail and if nothing else, he has become another chapter in the highly episodic media narrative of this campaign.

These findings are part of PEJ’s running content analysis of media coverage, called the News Coverage Index (NCI). During the election year, PEJ has added special coding to more closely examine coverage of the race for President and renamed the work the Campaign Coverage Index. (The full NCI data appear at the bottom of this report.) The CCI measures both the nature of the campaign narrative and the amount of coverage devoted to each candidate. The race for exposure is measured by the number of stories in which a candidate plays a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). The campaign storyline of the week—the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage—are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole.

Overall, the presidential campaign accounted for 51% of the newshole, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index for Oct. 13-19. That’s up 10 points from the previous week and it represents the highest level of election coverage since the week of the GOP convention (Sept. 1-7). Moreover, after several recent weeks when the economic crisis was bigger news than the campaign, the race for the White House has clearly re-emerged as the lead topic in the news, generating more than twice as much coverage as the financial situation last week. The campaign was the top story from Oct. 13-19 in all five media sectors, accounting for a whopping 80% of all the cable airtime studied.

Last week, with the final McCain-Obama debate widely viewed as one of the Republican’s last chances to change the dynamic of the campaign, the strategic narrative was favoring Obama.

An Oct. 15 Los Angeles Time story reported on the paper’s own poll showing Obama stretching what had been a four-point lead into a nine-point lead over McCain (50% to 41%). A key theme was the impact of the economy on the race. “In the weeks between the two surveys, the nation’s financial system teetered toward collapse, and the poll shows the effect of that upheaval on voters,” the story said.

The next night, Obama’s edge in the Electoral College math was the subject of John King’s report on CNN. Focusing in on six hotly contested battleground states that were won by George Bush in 2004, King noted that “even if John McCain swept the remaining toss-up states...he would still trail Barack Obama in the Electoral College.” McCain’s only path to victory, King ventured, would be to “pick a blue state to turn red.”

Media reaction to the Oct. 15 debate followed a predictable pattern. Many of the pundits scored it as a draw, with McCain being the more aggressive debater and Obama displaying his trademark coolness and failure to rattle. The quickie polls gauging viewer sentiment, as has been the case in all the debates, showed Obama to be the winner in the public’s view. And many post-mortems concluded that McCain did not pull off the dramatic win he might have needed to change the race.

There was however, one new wrinkle to the debate coverage, with many accounts describing the encounter as far livelier than its two predecessors.

“In the last of three debates, the candidates…engaged in their most intense confrontation of the campaign, clashing on taxes, health care, school vouchers, abortion, energy policy and the increasingly bitter tone of the historic contest,” declared a Washington Post story.

Interviewed on his network’s Oct. 16 newscast, debate moderator Bob Schieffer, of CBS, likened the event to “a heavyweight championship fight, or the World Series or the Super Bowl.” (There is no stopping the sports metaphors when it comes to describing debates.) And he told Katie Couric that “It’s pretty clear that these two men don’t like each other very much…It was kind of tense up there.”

It was during that debate that the legend of Joe the Plumber was born. And almost immediately, the press descended on the home of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who seemed to enjoy the exposure until reporters began probing his political views, employment status, and a tax lien filed against him. An October 16 ABC report declared that “the networks battled over him as if he were Britney,” adding that by the end of the week, “Joe was already feeling the flip side of fame.”

And now, in the rest of the week’s news:

The No. 2 story of the week, behind the election, was the financial crisis, filling 23% of the newshole as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. That’s down significantly from the previous week’s total of 36%. The biggest chunk of last week’s coverage on that subject—23%—concerned the elements of the federal bailout plan with the fluctuating Stock Market close behind at 21%. The two media sectors that devoted the most time to the economic meltdown were online (32%) and newspapers (31%).

The wildfires in Southern California, were the third-biggest story of the week, at 3% of the newshole, followed by coverage of the economy not directly related to the financial crisis (2%). The baseball playoffs, which produced an unlikely World Series in which the Philadelphia Phillies will face off against the Tampa Bay Rays, was the fifth-biggest story at 1%.

Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Campaign Storylines of the Week

 

	Total Percent of Campaign Newshole
October 15 Presidential Debate	17.5%
Financial Crisis Reaction	9.0
Joe the Plumber	7.9
Voting Issues	7.6
Swing State Strategy	7.0
McCain v. Obama Polls	4.7
Total Number of Campaign Stories = 545

 

Top Overall Stories of the Week

Rank	Story	Percent of Newshole
1	2008 Campaign	51%
2	Financial Crisis/ Fed Bailout	23
3	Southern California Wildfires	3
4	U.S. Economy	2
5	Baseball Playoffs	1
6	U.S. Domestic Terrorism	1
7	Health Care Debate	1
8	Gas/ Oil Prices	1
9	Tim Mahoney Scandal	1
10	Immigration	1

Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.

Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index

It was a brutal week on Wall Street. The stock market plunged below 9,000 for the first time in five years. In the race for President, 66 million people watched John McCain and Barack Obama face off in their second debate, a town hall-style event, in Nashville.

Yet the media narrative of the campaign focused on tone and tactics last week, perhaps as the press searched for something that might alter the strategic dynamic of the race.

For the first time in a month, the 2008 campaign generated more coverage than the financial crisis (41% vs. 36%). And almost one-third of that election coverage was connected to the increasingly harsh tone of the campaign, according to the Oct. 6-12 Campaign Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project For Excellence in Journalism.

The biggest component of that storyline—attacks often focused on the candidates’ character and associations—accounted for 26% of the week’s campaign newshole. Most of them emanated from McCain and they included efforts to link Obama to 60’s radical Bill Ayers. As the week went on, the anger boiling up at Republican rallies also became part of the story. For his part, Obama reprised the Keating Five savings and loan-related scandal that ensnared the Arizona Senator two decades ago.

Another 3% of the campaign newshole was devoted to stories that examined the Ayers/Obama relationship. A smaller slice of coverage, less than 1%, took at look at McCain’s role in the Keating Five saga.

The second-biggest storyline was the Oct. 7 presidential debate, which filled 17% of the campaign newshole. But that was a big drop from the level of attention paid to the previous week’s vice-presidential debate, which filled about three times as much space. (The encounter between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden also attracted about 7 million more viewers than McCain-Obama II).

As a further sign that the economy is shrinking as a narrative in the media’s account of the presidential election, the candidates’ reaction to the meltdown on Wall Street and in the credit markets fell to the third biggest campaign storyline. Although some of the Oct. 7 debate also focused on that situation, the financial crisis has played an increasingly smaller role in the campaign narrative in the past few weeks. From Oct. 6-12, the candidates’ response to the crisis accounted for 9% of the campaign newshole, down from 15% the week before.

As polls show Obama gaining ground in his lead over McCain, strategy and tactics may be a growing factor in the coverage. Even excluding the candidates’ hard-hitting attacks, the horserace elements generally accounted for another 11% of last week’s campaign coverage. The top narrative in that category was coverage of the polls themselves, at 6%. The battle for swing states, tilting toward Obama in recent surveys, was next at 2%.

Last week also saw the re-emergence of the two men at the top of the ticket as the campaign’s principal newsmakers. Obama led the competition for exposure, registering as a significant or dominant factor in 79% of the campaign stories compared with 75% of McCain. In both cases, the presidential candidates virtually doubled their coverage from the previous week.

Conversely, Palin’s and Biden’s coverage dropped dramatically, once their debate had ended. The Alaska Governor was a significant or dominant factor in 17% of the campaign stories, down from 51% the previous week. Biden was a focus of just 6% of the stories, a drop from 30% the previous week.

These findings are part of PEJ’s running content analysis of media coverage, called the News Coverage Index (NCI). During the election year, PEJ has added special coding to more closely examine coverage of the race for President and renamed the work the Campaign Coverage Index. (The full NCI data appear at the bottom of this report.) The CCI measures both the nature of the campaign narrative and the amount of coverage devoted to each candidate. The race for exposure is measured by the number of stories in which a candidate plays a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (at least 50% of the story). The campaign storyline of the week—the specific themes that make up the campaign coverage—are measured as a percentage of overall coverage, or newshole.

With the rescue plan through Congress, and the candidates in full debate phase, the campaign received the most coverage last week, Oct. 6-12, since the first week of September—filling 41% of the space in print and online and time on radio and TV as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index. Yet that number also reflects a certain split in the media culture’s representation of the news at the moment.

The presidential race was the No. 1 story in just two of the five media sectors last week. The economic meltdown dominated in newspapers, online and on network news. Yet that focus was offset by the intensity of election coverage in the two platforms that offer opinion-oriented talk and talking head shows. The campaign consumed 66% of the cable airtime studied last week and 55% of the radio newshole.

And with the outlines of the last lap of the race now apparently clear—Obama ahead and McCain chasing—much of the media spotlight shifted to the noticeably nastier campaign discourse.

Brit Hume’s Oct. 6 Fox News Channel program profiled attacks coming from both camps. It focused on McCain’s efforts to tie Obama to Ayers and to question the Democrat’s patriotism and character. And it looked at Obama’s attempt to link McCain to the Keating case in which five senators, including McCain, were accused of improperly protecting the chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan, who was eventually imprisoned.

Even when the candidates turned their attention to the dimensions of the crisis threatening the U.S. economy, it was often to unload on their opponent. An Oct. 10 story in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette stated that at an Ohio rally, “the Democratic candidate for president described his Republican opponent’s approach to the financial crisis as ‘risky” and “erratic,’ a word he used twice.” In response, the story added, McCain told voters in Wisconsin, “that Democrats [including Obama] were taking credit for the rescue package after standing by idly as the subprime crisis festered.”

As races play out, reporters on the ground often look for clues about what is happening before they might show up as trends in polls. Last week some reporters, noticeably in print, focused on the atmosphere at GOP campaign events, which may have been a reaction to the tone of the candidates’ ads and rhetoric.

An Oct. 9 Los Angeles Times report on a McCain and Palin rally in Pennsylvania said that “the edgy tone of the rally here was set even before the duo arrived onstage, when local Republican official William Platt warmed up the audience by twice referring to the Democratic nominee as ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’”

On her Oct. 9 CNN program, Campbell Brown showed footage of angry Republicans in a campaign crowd imploring McCain to attack Obama harder. “In recent days, we are seeing something we hadn’t seen before, which is rage at these events,” said correspondent Ed Henry. “This is raw emotion coming out from these Republican voters.”

“It might well backfire,” he added.

Those political ramifications were also the subject of an Oct. 10 Politico story that talked about McCain having to calm some of his backers. “Fearing the raw and at times angry emotions of his supporters may damage his campaign, John McCain on Friday urged them to tone down their increasingly personal denunciations of Barack Obama,” the story stated, “including one woman who said she had heard that the Democrat was "an Arab."

And once again a presidential debate provided more evidence that the media and voters view these face-to-face enco