From January 2007 -- when Bush announced the "surge" -- through the end of May 2007, Iraq had been the dominant story, accounting for 20% of all the news coverage measured by PEJ's News Coverage Index. But from the time of that May funding vote through the war's fifth anniversary on March 19, 2008, coverage plunged by about 50%. In that period, the media paid more than twice as much attention to the presidential campaign as it did to the war.
In the first three months of 2008, coverage of the campaign outstripped coverage of the war by a margin of more than 10-to-1 (43% of the newshole compared with 4%).
The reduction in violence on the ground that began late last year has coincided with a significant decrease in coverage from the war zone as well.
In November, stories filed from Iraq began to take greater notice of the surge's success in reducing violence, even as the volume of coverage tapered off, evidence perhaps of the old adage that no news is good news.
clipped from: pewresearch.org 