Last week's busy and diverse news landscape included an historic bankruptcy filing, mixed economic signals, a deadly air disaster and a murder that inflamed one of the nation's most contentious social policy battles. But the week's top story once again demonstrated the star power and sweeping policy agenda of the new President.
Barack Obama's overseas trip—punctuated by a June 4 address to the Muslim world from Cairo University—filled 20% of the newshole from June 1-7, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was largely because it was the No. 1 story in the three so-called electronic media sectors of PEJ's weekly News Coverage Index—radio (28% of the newshole), cable (25%) and network news (24%).
That level of coverage was very similar to the attention Obama generated (21% of the newshole) from March 30-April 5 during his first major appearance on the international stage as President at the G-20 Summit. In both cases, a key storyline was the same—that Obama was unveiling both a substantive and stylistic re-orientation of American foreign policy that at its core, appears to be more oriented to conciliation than confrontation.
Read the full report Conciliation in Cairo Drives the News Agenda on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.