The Obama Administration has been writing the narrative for economic news coverage since Inauguration Day, according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.  The PEJ analyzed coverage from February 1 through July 3 and found that government action was the impetus for nearly half the stories--49% to be exact.  The media "triggered" 23% of stories themselves through investigative pieces, interviews, or other types of stories.  Businesses drove the story line almost as often as the media themselves--triggering 21% of the stories.  The government led the way even more during February and March, with all the stimulus package and TARP stories dominating the news.

The report shows a media that was responding to events more than seeking out root causes and leading investigations.  From the report:

The study also sheds some light on the question of how aggressive and proactive the press itself was in covering the economy story. Overall, about one-fifth of the economic stories were triggered primarily by the initiative of journalists. But the degree of media enterprise varied notably depending on the topic—and the bigger topics tended to have less press enterprise while the smaller ones had more.

When it came to the biggest economic storylines, the media were more reactive. In coverage of the banking sector problems, for instance, press enterprise and investigations triggered only 14% of stories, and on stimulus coverage, 15%.

The media were more pro-active in monitoring the housing crisis (23%) and quite aggressive when it came to covering the unemployment picture, with press enterprise and investigation accounting for 35% of the triggers.  And in one significant storyline, the crisis’ impact on ordinary citizens, press enterprise proved to be the trigger for more than half (54%) of the stories.

Among the other findings by the PEJ report:

-Three storylines have dominated: efforts to help revive the banking sector, the battle over the stimulus package and the struggles of the U.S. auto industry. Together they accounted for nearly 40% of the economic coverage from February 1 through August 31. Other topics related to the crisis have been covered much less. As an example, all the reporting of retail sales, food prices, the impact of the crisis on Social Security and Medicare, its effect on education and the implications for health care combined accounted for just over 2% of all the economic coverage

-Fully 76% of the datelines on economic stories studied during the first five months of the Obama presidency were New York (44%) or metro Washington D.C. (32%). Only about one-fifth (21%) of the stories originated in any other city in the U.S., and about a quarter of those emanated from two other major media centers: Atlanta and Los Angeles. 

-Once the economic situation showed some signs of improvement—and the political fights over legislative action subsided—media coverage began to diminish. After accounting for 46% of the overall news coverage in February and March, for instance, coverage of the economic crisis dropped by more than half (to 21% of the newshole studied) from April through June. And in July and August, it fell even further (to 16%). The clearest example came in cable news. Once the political battles subsided, coverage fell by about two-thirds from March to April.

You can read the full report here.