Obama, Palin: Overloaded public

by Mark Silva

Hearing too much about Barack Obama?

Many Americans say so in the final days of the presidential election campaign - "just as they did over the summer - but at least as many now say the same about Sarah Palin,'' the Pew Research Center's Andrew Kohut reports.

Yet "Palin was the focus of a relatively small amount of media coverage last week, compared with the amount of campaign coverage focused on the presidential candidates,'' Kohut notes, reporting on the weekly findings of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Four-in-ten of those surveyed say they've been hearing too much about Obama, the Democratic nominee for president. That's down slightly from 48 percent in early August.

Yet as many or more (46 percent) say they've been hearing too much about Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Far fewer Americans (31 percent) say they've been hearing too much about McCain, Kohut notes.

"While Obama was the most heavily covered candidate last week, news coverage of Palin was up significantly from the previous week,'' the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. Palin was featured prominently in 22 percent of campaign news stories, compared to 8 percent one week earlier. Obama was featured in 61 percent of campaign stories, and McCain was featured in 50 percent.

"Increased coverage of Palin was fueled, at least in part, by the controversy surrounding the amount of money the Republican National Committee had spent on her wardrobe,'' Kohut notes. "Fully half of the public (52 percent) heard a lot about the RNC spending $150,000 on clothes for Palin - roughly the same number that heard a lot about (former Secretary of State) Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama.''