Survey: U.S. Public More Interested In Tucson Than Cairo

While the news media--particularly cable news outlets--may be blanketing the Middle East crisis, the U.S. public is not nearly as interested, according to the Pew Research Center's News Interest Index.

While news organizations gave 20% of their coverage to the Middle East story last week, according to the index only 11% of the public were most interested in the story over the Jan. 27-30 survey period, less than a third of those (38%) who were most-closely following the aftermath of the Tucson shootings and third behind the 28% who most closely followed the President's State of the Union speech. The disconnect there was huge, with only 4% of major news outlets' news holes devoted to that story.

The Pew survey was conducted Jan. 27-30 among 2,007 adults 18-plus.

While they may have been paying closer attention to Tucson, 17% said they were still following the Middle East situation closely, which puts it number three on Pews top 10 list of overseas protests behind the 18% who followed protests in Belgrade in 2000 and the 31% who followed the Iranian election crackdown in 2009, where social media's role in such protests was a big theme, as it has been in the Egypt story.

Interest in the president's State of the Union speech (the number-two story in terms of coverage with 17% of the news hole) was down from previous years and speeches, with only 12% saying they followed that most closely. The 28% saying they followed it closely was down from the 33% who said the same thing about the 2010 State of the Union speech and the 37% for the President's speech to a joint session of Congress shortly before taking office.

Not surprisingly, there was not much political union in the political breakout of the interest index, with 46% of Democrats saying they followed the speech very closely, compared to 19% of Republicans/independents.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.