Cable TV's disaster coverage gets low marks

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Tens of thousands have died in the natural disasters in Myanmar and China, but the coverage has been fighting for airtime with Campaign 2008 on the U.S. cable news channels.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press said Thursday that there was a fair amount of interest among Americans in the Chinese earthquake, about as much as the presidential campaign. But it accused cable news channels of devoting way more coverage to the politicians.

A Pew survey of 1,000 adult Americans conducted last week said that 22 percent of Americans said they followed the earthquake more closely than any other news story during the week of May 12-18. It was slightly ahead of the percentage of Americans who closely followed the 2008 presidential campaign (20 percent) but nowhere near the top news story of the week, which was gasoline prices (31 percent). Yet the earthquake got 13 percent of news coverage for the week, compared with 37 percent for the campaign.

The Myanmar cyclone, high gasoline prices and the California gay marriage ruling all got about the same amount of coverage, about 3-4 percent apiece.

Pew singles out cable news as the prime medium ignoring the earthquake, with only 4% of news coverage devoted to it while the campaign received 74 percent. Network TV news -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- and national newspapers split coverage more evenly.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter