News Coverage Shifts to Election From War in Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: News Coverage Shifts to Election From War in Iraq
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: August 20, 2007

News coverage of the Iraq war fell sharply in the second quarter of the year, as the news media paid increased attention to the presidential campaign and the immigration debate, according to a detailed analysis to be released today.

As in the first quarter, CNN and MSNBC each devoted about twice as much time to the war as their cable competitor Fox News Channel, according to the report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research group. MSNBC stood apart in giving twice as much time to the presidential campaign as the other two.

The project began this year to keep a detailed track of news coverage in a selection of newspapers, cable news programs, popular Web sites and radio shows, as well as the broadcast networks’ nightly news and morning shows — 18,000 reports from 48 outlets from April to June. The results show sharp differences among competitors, and from one medium to another.

But a consistent finding was a fall-off in war reports, to 15 percent of the “news hole” (the available amount of editorial space) in the second quarter from 22 percent in the first quarter. While the first three months of the year were steeped in coverage of the debate in Washington over the war, the second quarter had far fewer reports of them, after Congress agreed to provide war financing without imposing withdrawal deadlines....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/business/media/20journalism.html

[bemildred]

1. Pay no attention to the little man behind the screen. nt