More campaign coverage means less war coverage

August 20, 2007

The war in Iraq is obviously the biggest issue on the national policy landscape, but it’s not dominating the news the way it used to.

In media terms, Iraq is becoming the incredible shrinking war.

While the conflict consumed 15 percent of the space or airtime at many news outlets in the second quarter of 2007, that is down from 22 percent in the first three months of the year, says a new report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Filling the void in part is the 2008 presidential race, which rose from 7 percent to 9 percent of the news content in newspapers and on television, radio and the Internet.

Of the three major news networks, two are now devoting more coverage to next year’s presidential campaign than this year’s war. Fox News, for example, focused on Iraq 8% of the time in the last quarter, as compared to 10% for the campaign. MSNBC gave the war 15%, but devoted 21% of its airtime to the presidential race. Only CNN had the ratio flipped the other way, with 18% going to Iraq, and 9% for the campaign.

“It’s a lot easier to cover it as a political debate in Washington than to cover it on the ground in Iraq,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, which is part of the Pew Research Center in Washington.

That’s no doubt true. Maintaining a bureau in Baghdad is a challenge for any news outlet, whereas covering a presidential campaign is relatively straightforward.

But I was also interested in the next step — what news stories drew the most interest?

Here’s list of the top news stories of the second quarter from the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

1. 2008 Campaign (9%)
2. Events in Iraq (7%)
3. Iraq Policy Debate (7%)
4. Immigration (6%)
5. VA Tech Shootings (5%)
6. Don Imus (2%)
7. Iran (2%)
8. U.S. Attorney scandal (2%)
9. Iraq Homefront (2%)
10. Palestinian Conflict (1%)

All in all, the list doesn’t look that bad, though I’d find it more encouraging if media coverage of the presidential campaigns didn’t suck so much. Indeed, the PEJ report doesn’t offer this kind of detail, but I’d love to see an additional breakdown of how the campaign coverage broke down over the quarter.

Which do you support got more coverage, John Edwards’ hair or his Iraq policy? Hillary Clinton on healthcare or her neckline?

Damn it, Man, don’t you know we in a campaign!

  • Palestinian conflict? What Palestinian conflict? I thought that was all over since there hasn’t been any news about it. If it isn’t reported, did it really happen? I’m thinking that global warming is all taken care of too. Haven’t seen that much in the press. The press has a lousy attention span.

  • Campaign coverage–which I believe is saturated at this early date–provides just the ‘shiny bright object’ with which to distract from Iraq and the dissolution of our civil liberties. And those who would support such coverage know it.

  • “Palestinian conflict?” I thought it was the “Israeli conflict.” The fucking bias is so embedded in our language, even “reality based” community has no idea they have no idea. No offense.

    How do the percentages work out on the BBC? I watch the BBC. And the CBC. And over 70 different types of porn at Mitt Romney’s hotels.

  • Of course we won’t see much Iraq war coverage, the mega corporations doing the “covering” make millions selling military aircraft engines and whatnot.

  • Rudyard K. summed it up best:
    “An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!”

    Another group of neglected/ignored soldiers. MSM loves heroes, but don’t give a shit about survivors (not the “reality” show.)

  • There you have it –they’re not reporting all the good stuff happening in Iraq– or else it would be leading the news every night.

    And if you believe that, I have some used vacuum cleaners for sale.

  • I find it quite disturbing that Don Imus is ahead of or tied with the US Attorney Scandal. Yes, Imus was way over the line, and having a discussion about race and gender and sex and coarseness on the airwaves is important. But Imus was, and soon again will be, paid to be a loudmouth. That he lives up to that is hardly “news.” The attorney scandal, on the other hand, encapsulates most of what has been wrong in the past with BushCo that is important for the nation to see, and shows the real risk extending into the future that BushCo’s plan to rig the system might actually have worked in a lasting way — elections may have been impacted.

  • In a certain light, the 2008 campaign is bigger news than Iraq because until Bush is deposed nothing looks like it will change in Iraq. The solution to the war seems to be getting Bush out of the picture and a reasonable leader back in charge.

  • This is, IMHO, a tempest in a teapot. If you add up all the top news stories (from categories in P.f.E.i.J. list) that relate to the Iraq invasion (I’m figuring 1.5% of 2008 campaign stories dealt w/ candidates’ war positions, .5% Iraq-related content in Iran Homefront stories category, and the others that actually have Iraq in the category title, the total is 18% Iraq headlines vs. 9% 2008 campaign top news stories.

    Should there be a greater difference? Perhaps. But I don’t see Iraq being ignored in any way, or shunted aside for domestic politics stories to the degree that this article tries to bemoan.

  • colonpowwow: That’s a great point.
    Also, from the PEJ report:
    “That decrease resulted largely from a decline in coverage of the Washington-based policy debate, which fell 42% from the first to second quarter, once the Democrats failed to impose timetables in legislation funding of the war”.

    I wonder where the distinction is made between a candidate talking about Iraq and the Iraq policy debate. It seems like there’s a lot of Iraq policy debate in the media right now, certainly infinitely more than in the runup to it, so I’m not entirely sure that their study is all that robust.

  • Events in Iraq + Iraqi Homefront + Iraq Policy Debate = 16%

    Political Campaign + Iraq Policy Debate = 16%

    Seems that is pretty balanced to me. The overlap is actually a good thing.

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