McCain grabs most --if not best--attention

Republican frontrunner John McCain generated the most media attention of any candidate in a week that saw the highest level of coverage yet for the 2008 presidential campaign. For the week of February 4-10, which included the Super Tuesday parade of primaries, McCain was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 42% of all campaign stories. As leading newsmaker for the second straight week, he narrowly edged Democrats Hillary Clinton (41%) and Barack Obama (40%), according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study of campaign coverage.

While McCain, Clinton and Obama received the most press attention; none of them generated the media narrative they really wanted. McCain’s Super Tuesday results made him the presumptive nominee, but many stories focused on his struggles with unhappy Republican conservatives. And with the results of the Democratic primaries reinforcing a story of stalemate, the media began examining the possibility of a deadlock that goes all the way to the nominating convention.

Thanks to Super Tuesday, fully 55% of the newshole last week was filled by election stories—the highest level of election coverage since PEJ started measuring it in January 2007.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “Campaign Coverage Index”—which will appear weekly until the party nominees are selected—also finds that:

• Mike Huckabee’s surprising Super Tuesday showing proved once again that journalists had written him off too soon. He was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 19% of last week’s stories, nearly a ten-fold increase from a mere 2% the week before.
• Mitt Romney (28%) earned his highest level of coverage to date; but some of it was dedicated to the post-mortem of a campaign that ended after Super Tuesday.
• Just two weeks after Bill Clinton figured in 18% of the campaign coverage and generated criticism of his prominent role, his disappearing act continued. For the week of Feb. 4-10, he registered as a significant or dominant newsmaker in only 2% of stories.
• Republicans (41%) slightly edged out Democrats (38%) in the race for overall party coverage.

Click here for a direct link to a PDF of the report