As we note in this report, there is virtually no national coverage of education. During the first nine months of 2009, only 1.4 percent of national news coverage from television, newspapers, news Web sites, and radio dealt with education. This paucity of coverage is not unique to 2009. In 2008, only 0.7 percent of national news coverage involved education, while 1.0 percent did so in 2007. This makes it difficult for the public to follow the issues at stake in our education debates and to understand how to improve school performance.
One problem with this argument, however, is that it rests on an analysis that divides news coverage into dozens of categories. Because the media have so many topics to cover, it is no wonder that any particular topic will receive only a small percentage of the coverage. In the first half of 2009, the nation faced an economic crisis prompting Congress to pass a gigantic spending bill. Yet economics only got 11.3 percent of the coverage. In 2007, the figure was only 3.6 percent.
