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Posted By: cooper 3/28/08 5:31:44 AM

It's interesting to see that Obama is consistently getting as many news stories as his two opponents combined -- and consistently getting twice the number of mentions as Hillary Clinton. The sharp drop in John McCain mentions occurred in the wake of Hillary Clinton's unexpected victories in Ohio and Texas. McCain was campaigning (in Georgia) during this time period, but coverage of his campaign suffered as attention was focused on the next Democratic primary contest -- county caucuses in Wyoming. The fact that the Republicans already have their nominee is presumably the cause of a gradual, but consistent decline in stories mentioning John McCain -- a 25 percent reduction in the past three weeks.

Posted By: cooper 3/28/08 6:04:29 AM

Upon further reflection, I must conclude that apparent drop in McCain mentions around March 7-8 is illusory and due to a fault in the data set. Google's story counts include several months' worth of stories, so these graphs reflect a rolling trend, not day-to-day data. It is improbable that almost 90,000 John McCain stories dropped out of the Google news-story database in one day -- and equally improbable that 80,000 new stories appeared the following day. They say figures don't lie, but, in this case, I think they do.

Posted By: cooper 4/7/08 5:01:54 AM

Even though the controversy over Rev. Wright's comments seems to have gently subsided, Obama continues to get as many press mentions as the other two presidential candidates combined. He appears to be generating a significant number of op-ed pieces that examine his candidacy without mentioning his female or ex-POW opponents by name. Some of the recent ink (or should I say electrons) is linked to press coverage of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. -- and the progress that has allowed an African-American candidate to have a good chance at the presidency. (No, I'm not forgetting Shirley Chisholm.) Other recent coverage includes an AP poll that shows many Americans wrongly believe him to be a Muslim, including a Delaware teacher who told her class that Obama is "scary." Almost 10 percent of stories focusing exclusively on Obama mention the Muslim aspect -- and this trend can be expected to continue, since polls show two-thirds of Americans admit at least some prejudice against Muslims and half believe that Muslims are not "loyal" to the U.S. "Christian" news outlets are also generating a significant number of these stories.