Rhetoric Reigns

Regarding the Jan. 8 assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the killing of six people and the wounding of more than a dozen in Tucson, the part of the story that received the most coverage was the alleged role of political rhetoric. That is according to a report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The story’s many facets, including President Obama’s speech, vigils and a profile of the shooter, accounted for 57% of the total news coverage for the period of Jan. 6-10, the third-highest total since PEJ launched its News Coverage Index in January 2007. The only two bigger stories were both Washington-related: the nomination of Barack Obama and the selection by John McCain of Sarah Palin for VP candidate.

The PEJ index looks at 52 different outlets from five sectors: print, online, network TV, cable TV and radio. According to the index, of that large news total for Jan. 6-10 devoted to the Tucson shootings story, 27% was focused on the argument over the “tenor of political discourse,” which more than doubled the attention paid to the straight news story (12%) and was well above the second-biggest story, a profi le of alleged shooter Jared Loughner and his family (20%).

Cable and talk radio were home to the largest share of the political rhetoric debate, with that topic taking up 57% of the time devoted to the Tucson story on radio and 32% on cable.

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.