Oil or Supreme Court: Which makes news?
It seems all the news has covered over the past few weeks is the oil spill and the Supreme Court nomination. We wondered: which dominated more of the media?
According to the Project for Excellence in journalism, the top two stories in the past week were the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination and the BP Oil rig explosion.
The Oil rig won out, getting 17% of all media coverage this week. Kagan got only 13% of the media coverage. The disparity in media coverage says a lot about how important of a commodity oil is. When the oil market is disrupted, the oil industry gets a monumental about of media coverage.
Whether the oil news is a change in prices, a drop in availability or an environmental disaster, crude oil is one of the most important elements in keeping our modern commodity market running.