bin Laden's Death Dominates the News

The death of Osama bin Laden drove unprecedented amounts of coverage last week, making it the biggest story in a single week since the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism began tracking mainstream media coverage in January 2007.

Coverage of the May 1 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and its aftermath, accounted for 69% of the newshole during the week of May 2-8, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index. That edged out the media attention (just under 69%) devoted to the presidential campaign from August 25-31, 2008, when Democrats nominated Barack Obama at their Denver convention and John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his surprise running mate. On cable television alone, the bin Laden story accounted for a staggering 90% of the airtime studied last week. In another illustration of the enormity of coverage, bin Laden was a dominant newsmaker in 28% of last week’s stories, the most media attention devoted to anyone since the week of Barack Obama’s inauguration, January 19-25, 2009. Overall coverage of the story did taper somewhat throughout the week. On Monday, it accounted for 83% of the newshole. On Friday, it accounted for 40%. Yet even at its lowest level, the subject dominated all other news events.