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TAP FOR DETAILED VIEW
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COMPILED BY MARLA FRIEDMAN; TED SOQUI/CORBIS (TRAYVON SIGN); AP PHOTO/CAROLYN KASTER (OBAMA);
BETTMANN/CORBIS (STOCK MARKET); AP PHOTO/CAROLYN KASTER, EVAN VUCCI (OBAMA AND ROMNEY)
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The Great
Divide
Each week, a News
Coverage Index by the
Pew Research Center’s
Project for Excellence in
Journalism identifies the top
stories across newspapers,
network and cable TV,
radio and the Internet and
measures the percentage
of news coverage devoted
to those stories. A News
Interest Index by the Pew
Research Center for the
People & the Press asks
people to state which story
they followed most closely
each week. At right, we
show the differences in the
indices on a weekly basis
since the beginning of
2012. At left, we’ve placed
each week’s stories into
broader categories to show
which index has been higher
overall. A positive number
indicates news coverage
has been higher; a negative
number indicates news
interest has been higher.
This graphic was created by calculating the difference in news
coverage and news interest for each story on a weekly basis,
and then assigning each story to a general news category. The
differences between coverage and interest were then totaled for
each category. A subjective decision was made for placement of
stories that fell under more than one category. If a story received
less than 1 percent of news coverage, it was treated as having
received zero for the purposes of this graphic.
All data used is from Pew. The News Coverage Index is based on top stories covered Monday to Sunday each week.
The News Index Survey is based on a telephone survey conducted among a sample of about 1,000 adults in the U.S.
from Thursday to Sunday each week, and its sampling error ranges from plus or minus 3 to 4 percentage points. The
two indices are comparable, but not strictly equivalent.
NEWS NEWS
COVERAGE INTEREST
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY