Journalisted Weekly: Resignations, Tunisian fever, and Blair returns

Leave a reply

Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

for the week ending Sunday 23 January

  • Domestically, Alan Johnson, Andy Coulson and Tony Blair dominated coverage
  • Internationally, the press focused on Tunisian-style protests across the Middle East and North Africa
  • A massive mafia crackdown, suicide bombs in Iraq, and controversy over counter-terrorism against students received little attention

Covered lots

  • Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson resigns due to ‘personal reasons’ and is replaced by Shadow Home Secretary Ed Balls, 179 articles
  • No.10 Director of Communications Andy Coulson resigns, citing coverage of News of the World phone hacking, 176 articles
  • Tunisia-style protests spread across North Africa and the Middle East, with cases of self-immolation reported in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania, 142 articles
  • Tony Blair faces the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq war for a second time, 121 articles

Covered little

  • Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, surviving a confidence vote, resigning as party leader, and calling an early election as the Green Party pulls out of the coalition, 58 articles
  • The FBI makes 127 arrests across north-eastern US, reported to be one of its largest mafia crackdowns in history, 15 articles
  • Controversy over a counter-terrorism police officer contacting universities for inside information on future student protests, 4 articles
  • A wave of bomb attacks in Iraq, killing up to 130 people in the same week Blair reappears at the Chilcot inquiry, 3 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs serious

Who wrote a lot about…’Andy Coulson’

James Robinson – 8 articles (The Guardian), Roy Greenslade – 7 articles (The Guardian), Nicholas Watt – 5 articles (The Guardian), David Maddox – 4 articles (The Scotsman)

Long form journalism

The Media Standards Trust’s panel event ‘Libel reform: in the public’s interest?’ is now available to watch on our website

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

Leave a Reply