Religion claims less than 1 percent of news coverage

Seems like you can't open a newspaper - or click a news site - without running into a monster-sized religion story: the Catholic church abuse scandal, Rep. Bart Stupak's role holding up - and then passing - the health care bill, U.S.-Israel relations on the skids over the construction of housing for Jews in East Jerusalem.

So is anyone else surprised that religion news accounted for less than 1 percent of print, TV and online coverage last year, according to a report out today from Pew? The graph above tells the story.

Pew says the most popular religion storyline of 2009 was how faith played into the Obama administration, accounting for roughly 10 percent of all religion-related news. The only other faith-based development to come close was Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the Middle East last May, the subject of 4.5 percent of last year's religion news.