WASHINGTON — Religion rivaled race and gender combined during media coverage of this year’s primary campaign season, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.
Excluding “horse-race” coverage of campaign tactics and strategy, religion accounted for 10 percent of nonpolitical-process coverage, barely trailing race and gender at a combined 11 percent, the report concluded.
The spring campaigns featured extraordinary coverage of Sen. Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright; Sen. John McCain’s struggle to win over evangelical voters; and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.
The study, by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, examined more than 13,000 news stories from nearly 50 mainstream news outlets including print, online, network TV, cable and radio covering a 16-month period from January 2007 through April 2008.
Religion trailed foreign policy issues (14 percent) and domestic policy issues (26 percent) in nonhorse-race campaign topics, yet it outpaced race and gender in a year when the Democratic contest was led by a woman, Hillary Clinton, and a black man, Obama.
“Indeed religion could be at least as important in the 2008 presidential campaign as it was in 2000 and 2004,” the study stated.
Dominating more than half of all religion/politics coverage was Obama’s severing ties with Wright.
McCain’s problems over endorsements from outspoken evangelicals like John Hagee and Rod Parsley also garnered press but “drew little attention compared to the Wright controversy,” the report said.
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