Driven by the Beltway version of a man-bites-dog story—President Obama aligning with Republicans and fighting with Democrats—last week's tax skirmishing pushed coverage of the U.S. economy to a new high in 2010.
For the week of December 6-12, the story of the economy filled 40% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence weekly index of news coverage. That easily surpassed the previous week's level (28%), which itself represented the most media attention to the topic since March 2009.
Last week's coverage focused almost entirely on one issue—the deal between Obama and Republicans extending the Bush-era tax cuts—which many analysts viewed as a clear sign that the president was moving to the center after the rebuke delivered in the midterm elections.
Read the full report A Taxing Week Fuels Economic Coverage on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.