Public Wants More Coverage of Darfur

News about an Atlanta man infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis drew a large audience last week. The saga of the man’s illness and his travels abroad was the second most closely followed news story of the week - trailing only the situation in Iraq. Nearly a quarter of the public (24%) paid very close attention to the tuberculosis story and 23% said it was the story they followed most closely. Public interest was fed by intense media coverage of the story. It was the most heavily covered news story of the week, comprising 12% of the national newshole.

Interest in news about the infected man and his travels did not reach the level of the SARS outbreak of 2003. In May of that year, 39% of the public was paying very close attention to news about SARS, though by June that number had fallen to 28%. Older Americans and those living in the Northeast and South are among the most interested in news about the TB saga. In addition, women are more likely than men to list this as the story they were following most closely last week.

Interest in the situation in Iraq remained high last week. Three-in-ten Americans followed events in Iraq very closely and 25% said this was the single news story they followed more closely than any other. The public continues to pay closer attention to events in Iraq than to the Iraq policy debate: 20% followed the policy debate very closely and 7% listed it as their top story. The news media split its Iraq coverage last week among events on the ground (7%) and the impact of the war at home (4%), including coverage of Cindy Sheehan’s decision to put her anti-war efforts on hold, and the Iraq policy debate (4%).

These findings are based on the most recent installment of the weekly News Interst Index, an ongoing project of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The index, building on the Center’s longstanding research into public attentiveness to major news stories, examines news interest as it relates to the news media’s agenda. The weekly survey is conducted in conjunction with The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, which monitors the news reported by major newspaper, television, radio and online news outlets on an ongoing basis.

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