The Pew Research Center released their latest News Interest Index survey, which examines the topics in last week’s news coverage and the public’s interest. Of note is the seeming disparity between the coverage and reported interest in the primary elections last Tuesday.
According to the study:
The media devoted comparable levels of coverage to the spill and news about last week’s primaries and the 2010 midterm elections (each accounted for 18% of the newshole), but the public showed much less interest in the political developments (5% followed this most closely) than the crisis in the gulf (46% most closely).
Advertisement
The study also notes, however, that while five 5% of those surveyed said the election was the “one story they followed most closely,” just over 20% did say they followed the elections “very closely,” which is on par with “Afghanistan” and “financial regulation” but half the number that said the oil leak and the economy.
You can see our cable news ratings for last Tuesday here, though there was not really a sizable uptick in viewership that evening compared to the rest of the week.