If you think Anthony Weiner got too much media coverage, you may just be getting your news from the wrong place, according to new data.
Ari MelberI have not written about Anthony Weiner’s sext scandal, a sad little saga that has received tons of news coverage because it is considered more interesting than actual news.
Last week, it felt like the top story in politics. But that’s not actually true.
Weiner’s plight was more like a blip in print and online media, according to new data, while the scandal drew far more time on TV and radio. Here’s a graph from Pew that tells the story:
Overall, Weiner took up 17 percent of all news coverage, but as the graph shows, coverage diverged widely depending on the medium. (The numbers are from coverage from June 6 to 12, and “Congressional scandals” refers to Weiner.)
Newspapers only spent 7 percent of their coverage on Weiner, and he didn’t get much more attention online. Meanwhile, cable spent one out of every three minutes on the beleaguered Brooklyn representative. So if you think Weiner was the big story, you might just be getting your news from the wrong place.
The entire report is available at Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.