Journalisted Yearly: Arab Spring, phone-hacking and the Eurozon

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.

Journalisted Yearly: Arab Spring, phone-hacking and the Eurozone

for the week ending Sunday 18 December

  • The Arab Spring, phone-hacking scandal and the Eurozone debt crisis were the biggest stories of 2011
  • The royal wedding, the natural disaster in Japan and the UK summer riots were extensively covered
  • Reality TV shows such as The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing attracted much media interest…
  • …while deadly mudslides in Brazil, Mexico’s ongoing drug war, the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and mass protests in Chile received little attention

Covered lots this year

Covered little this year

15 most covered UK politicians

Top 10 current European Union leaders

Protests around the world

12 most written about sports stars

Celebrity vs serious

Weird and wonderful

  • ‘The Rapture’ preacher Harold Camping predicted that the world was going to end in May. He then changed the date to October, 67 articles
  • Einstein’s theory of special relativity was called into question when scientists found neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, 51 articles
  • Silvio Berlusconi released an album of love songs, 30 articles
  • 20 tonnes of marmite were spilled on the motorway in South Yorkshire, 13 articles
  • Six members of the European Space Agency finally ended their 520 days of isolation as part of a simulated space journey to Mars. They were locked in a capsule in a Moscow car park for the experiment, 12 articles
  • A ‘drunk’ moose was found stuck in an apple tree in Sweden, 8 articles
  • In July, the first artificial organ transplant was carried out in Sweden. Scientists created a synthetic windpipe that was covered in the patient’s stem cells, meaning that there was no risk of organ rejection, 6 articles.
  • November saw the world’s biggest zombie march in Mexico City, 3 articles

Newly added words added to the Oxford English Dictionary

Who wrote a lot about…the Leveson Inquiry

Lisa O’Carroll – 71 articles (The Guardian), James Robinson – 57 articles (The Guardian), Josh Halliday – 43 articles (The Guardian), James Cusick – 37 articles (The Independent), Roy Greenslade – 35 articles (The Guardian), Dan Sabbagh – 30 articles (The Guardian), Ben Fenton – 29 articles (Financial Times), Ben Webster – 26 articles (The Times), Cahal Milmo – 24 articles (The Independent), Sarah Rainey – 20 articles (Daily Telegraph)

Long form journalism

Most prolific journalists

(by number of articles)

The Media Standards Trust, which runs journalisted, won the ‘One to Watch’ category at this year’s Prospect Think Tank Awards

Read about our campaign for the full exposure of phone hacking and other illegal forms of intrusion at the Hacked Off website

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Read the MST’s submission to parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the House of Lords Communications Select Committee on investigative journalism

The Orwell Prize 2012 is now open for entries following a launch debate on ‘Writing the Riots’

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

Leave a Reply