Only cable and radio thought the visit to America by Iran’s president was the top story of the week, but that was enough to put him in the top slot on the overall chart in the Project for Excellence in Journalism news coverage study for the week of 9/23/07-9/28/07. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knocked another controversial figure out of the #1 slot, O.J. Simpson, who (incredibly, it seemed to us) didn’t even show up with minor coverage on a single medium, much less remain in the top ten. There was across-the-board coverage of the 2008 campaign, strife in Myanmar and events in Iraq; there were also 14 topics on the chart one place or another that did not make the overall top ten, an unusually high number. At least one personality in the news/talk arena became the news: Bill O’Reilly commanded 2% of the overall news hole after his comments following a Harlem dinner with Al Sharpton. O’Reilly works on both cable and radio, and got 6% and 3% of their respective time allotments.
