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 16 January
- Floods in Brisbane and shootings in Arizona dominated the news during the week
- Protests leading to the ousting of Tunisia’s government received much coverage over the weekend
- Northern & Shell, Stuxnet, and controversy over Welsh organ donation received little coverage
Covered lots
- The Queensland floods hit Brisbane, swamping 30,000 properties, 167 articles
- Shootings in Arizona, with a lone gunman killing six people and severely wounding a US congresswoman, 161 articles
- Mass protests in Tunisia, causing the president to flee and a state of emergency to be declared, 126 articles
Covered little
- Renewed controversy over the Stuxnet cyber virus, which attacked Iran’s nuclear programme last year, 8 articles
- Northern & Shell, the group that owns the Express, Star and OK! pulls out of the UK press self-regulation system, 7 articles
- The Welsh Assembly Government calling for a ‘soft opt-out’ policy for organ donation and raising controversy over human rights, 4 articles
Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)
- David Cameron: 535 articles (+26% on previous week)
- Nick Clegg: 289 articles (+16% on previous week)
- Ed Miliband: 259 articles (+47% on previous week)
- George Osborne: 175 articles (+1% on previous week)
- Tony Blair: 118 articles (+44% on previous week)
- Gordon Brown: 97 articles (+26% on previous week)
- Vince Cable: 94 articles (-6% on previous week)
- Alan Johnson: 74 articles (+21% on previous week)
- Michael Gove: 69 articles (+28% on previous week)
- David Miliband: 65 articles (+333% on previous week)
Celebrity vs serious
- Colin Firth, winning a Golden Globe and tipped for an Oscar for The King’s Speech, 90 articles vs. flash floods and landslides in Brazil, killing over five hundred whilst thousands fled their homes, 49 articles
- Katie ‘Jordan’ Price, getting divorced from her husband Alex Reid, 46 articles vs. floods in Sri Lanka, killing over thirty people and displacing 30,000 from their homes, 33 articles
- Keira Knightley, splitting with her long term boyfriend Rupert Friend, 21 articles vs. the collapse of Lebanon’s government, as the Hezbollah-allied opposition pulled out of coalition, 20 articles
Who wrote a lot about…’Tunisia’
Richard Spencer – 9 articles (Telegraph), James Bones – 8 articles (The Times), Roula Khalaf – 7 articles (Financial Times), Heba Saleh – 5 articles (Financial Times), Colin Freeman (Telegraph) – 4 articles, Angelique Chrisafis – 4 articles (The Guardian)
Long form journalism
- 3,518 words: ‘How novels came to terms with the internet’ – Laura Miller, The Guardian, 15th January 2011
- 3,105 words: ‘What we can learn from a nuclear reactor’ – Tim Harford, Financial Times, 14th Janaury 2011
- 2,897 words: ‘White heat and dust’ – Patrick French – The Sunday Times, 16th January 2011
From The Media Standards Trust
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