There are other things happening in the world beside the chase for the White House in the United States, but you'd barely notice if you're relying on the US media to find out what those events are. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's news coverage chart for the week of 1/6/08-1/11/08 (its first in about a month), the campaign ate up half of the newshole. Online sources limited it to a quarter of its coverage, but all others had the campaign in tight focus, especially cable, which devoted two thirds of its time to the story. Radio devoted over half of its time to the campaign, and the coverage of other events was so diffused that two items on its top ten list could not even be rounded up to one full percentage point.

The stunner in all of this is the fact that a presidential visit to the major hot spot in the world was all but ignored. George W. Bush's visit to various ports of call in the Middle East earned a mere 4% of the overall newshole. As he enters his last year in office, you may or may not believe he has slipped into irrelevance, but the media would appear to believe that in general he has.

Story	Overall	Newspr	Online	NetTV	CATV	Radio
2008 campaign	49%	43%	24%	54%	66%	53%
Bush in the Mideast	4%	3%	12%	5%	2%	2%
US economy	3%	4%	x	6%	3%	2%
Iran	3%	x	5%	3%	7%	1%
Iraq events	3%	3%	6%	2%	1%	7%
Missing Marine	3%	x	x	1%	8%	x
Pakistan	2%	4%	5%	x	x	x
BoA/Countrywide	2%	2%	5%	2%	1%	<1%
Tornadoes	1%	x	4%	3%	x	<1%
Edmund Hillary passes	1%	x	6%	x	x	x
Health care	x	3%	x	x	x	x
Supreme Court	x	3%	x	x	x	1%
Western snowstorms	x	2%	x	1%	x	x
Domestic terrorism	x	2%	x	x	x	2%
Kenya elections/violence	x	x	5%	x	x	x
Missing GA hiker	x	x	3%	x	1%	x
Iraq policy	x	x	x	2%	1%	2%
Immigration	x	x	x	x	2%	x

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism