I'm a bit behind on posting my stats for Scarborough Country news coverage, so here's the summary for last week.

If I thought the week of Oct 10^th was fixated on violent crimes/missing persons (at 49% of the show's useful time dedicated to such stories, see round-up for the week 10/10/05), then I guess I have to use the words obsessed and wholly preoccupied to describe the coverage for the week of Oct.17^th. Since I’ve been tracking Scarborough Country’s topics (only four weeks now), last week hit a new high for total time dedicated to a handful of violent crimes. Just above sixty two percent (62.2%) of the show was dedicated to a handful of violent crimes/missing persons (Natalee Holloway, Pamela Vitale, Christie Wilson, Taylor Behl, and Scott Peterson). For a second week in a row the show scored perfect shut outs against topics like the Iraq war, CIA leak/plamegate, and the Supreme Court. Joe did find time (and money) for his show to travel to his alma mater (University of Alabama) and do a show largely dedicated to his warm feelings about the place and general nostalgia. Good job Joe, I guess you're a realist as to how many people are actually watching your show on a Friday night. I can't think of a better way to spend a national cable news program's time than discussing the origins of a college football team's mascot.

Joe Scarborough touts common sense, opening each show with the phrase: “Welcome to Scarborough Country; no passport required, only common-sense allowed.” I have to ask, where’s the common sense in pouring over the minutia and incessantly injecting nothing but speculation, guess work and opinion about a few crimes that are in the process of making their way through the criminal justice system? Talk about trial by media, most of Joe’s coverage is presented with an implicit and sometimes explicit assumption about the suspect’s guilt. The show continually displays a seemingly maniacal photo of the adolescent accused of the crime in the Vitale case, coupled with headlines like: “Goth kid killer”. Sometimes the headline includes a question mark, such as "Goth Killer?", as if that is their token attempted to maintain a presumption of innocense, which is a complete joke.

As I’ve stated before, almost all measures of violent crime are down. A show with such a singular focus on a few individual criminal cases should be relegated to court TV, but instead these topics not only dominate this program but also are frequently featured in as much, if not more, detail on MSNBC’s other programs (not to mention other cable news networks). But I only take notes for the topics of “Scarborough Country”, and the results for the week beginning Oct. 17^th are show in the pie chart and table below. Click on the pie chart image to enlarge.

Topic - week starting 10/17/05	M	T	W	Th	F	Total min.
Supreme Court	0	0	0	0	0	0
Iraq War	0	0	0	0	0	0
Katrina/FEMA	4	0	0	0	5	9
CIA Leak/Plamegate	0	0	0	0	0	0
Avian Bird flu	0	4	0	0	0	4
missing person (Holloway, Behl, Wilson, Peterson, "Shocking baby Horror")	27	30	25	23	20	125
Hurricane Wilma	1	2	12	11	6	32
Crimson Tide Football	0	0	0	0	11	11
Miscellaneous (Neo-nazi riot, global warming, CA car rescue, racy TV shows)	3	4	1	6	0	14
NFL Viking's wild party	6	0	0	0	0	6
Total minutes	41	40	38	40	42	201