Press Coverage and Public Interest: Matches and Mismatches

The public and news media were largely on the same page during the peak moments of the year’s biggest breaking news stories – the disaster in Haiti, the passage of health care legislation, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the outcome of the midterm elections. In most cases, the public and news media’s priorities were in sync. At their peak intensity, each of these stories filled over 40% of the week’s newshole, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, and was the most closely followed story that week by more than 40% – and in several instances about 60% – of the public, according the Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index. But there were moments, and stories, when the public’s interests diverged substantially from the press’ coverage. And those discrepancies, moreover, tended to fit a broader pattern. In general, the public tended to maintain its interest in major breaking news stories considerably longer than the press did. And the press tended to maintain substantially more interest in Washington Beltway controversies than did its audience. Most notably, in the weeks following three of these major news events – the Haiti disaster, the passage of health care legislation, and the capping of the gulf oil spill – public interest remained high long after the news media’s focus had turned elsewhere. And while public interest in the 2010 midterm elections was on par with press coverage in the final stages of the campaign season, coverage far exceeded public interest earlier in the campaign cycle.

Over the course of 2010, seven of nine cases in which coverage far exceeded public interest involved stories that had far greater resonance inside the Beltway than outside. These included the firing of General Stanley McChrystal, the release by WikiLeaks of classified State Department documents, Scott Brown’s winning the Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election, and the firing of Shirley Sherrod, a former U.S. agriculture department employee. Notably, several of these stories involved the media itself. These included: McChrystal and his staff’s being quoted criticizing the administration in Rolling Stone magazine, WikiLeaks raising questions about press responsibilities, and video of Sherrod being shown repeatedly out of its full context after being picked up from a conservative website.