Talk Hosts Opt For Politics Over The ‘TB Traveler’: May 27 - June 1, 2007

TALK HOSTS OPT FOR POLITICS OVER 'TB TRAVELER': MAY 27- JUNE 1
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
It’s not surprising that Andrew Speaker, (aka the “TB Traveler”) was the biggest story in the mainstream media generally last week. The tale of the Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous disease potentially putting others at risk during an overseas honeymoon touched on all sorts of issues—including homeland security, the methods of the Center for Disease Control, and the fact that the infected man’s father-in-law was a TB researcher. But despite all those angles, cable and radio talk hosts were unenthusiastic about the subject. While the story accounted for 12% of all the coverage in the general News Index last week, it filled only half that (6%) of the talk airtime, ranking it as the fourth biggest topic, according to PEJ’s Talk Show Index from May 27-June 1.
http://www.journalism.org/node/5966