The study that Steve Rendall and I conducted of nightly news coverage of the poor – which I mentioned last week would soon be out – is now online. (You can also grab a snazzy PDF version of it here.) Our key findings:

Despite being an issue that directly or indirectly affects a huge chunk of the U.S. population, poverty and inequality receive astonishingly little coverage on nightly network newscasts. An exhaustive search of weeknight news broadcasts on CBS, NBC and ABC found that with rare exceptions, such as the aftermath of Katrina, poverty and the poor seldom even appear on the evening news—and when they do, they are relegated mostly to merely speaking in platitudes about their hardships… [read more]