BBC Israel focus in numbers – October 2013

Below is our regular end of month count of articles appearing on the Middle East page of the BBC News website according to the countries/territories defined by the BBC as making up that region per the profiles on that page.

As in previous months (see ‘related articles’ below), the count relates to three categories of articles – headline, non-headline and features – with the total representing both the appearance of a report and its level of exposure in terms of the number of days it stayed up on the site.

Table Oct 13

As we see, Syria once again understandably received the most coverage on the BBC News website’s Middle East page throughout October. Egypt received the second most coverage, followed by Israel, Iran (largely in connection with the P5+1 talks), and with Libya in fifth place. Iraq – where almost a thousand people, mostly civilians, were killed in October – came sixth in terms of BBC News website coverage.

Thus we see that in the eight months between March and October 2013 inclusive, Israel has consistently been among the top five countries in terms of the amount of coverage and exposure on the BBC News website’s Middle East page. 

Table 2

A count of the totals for March to October inclusive shows that at the end of those eight months, Israel remained third in terms of coverage and exposure, after Syria and Egypt. 

chart

If readers are curious as to which countries defined by the BBC as making up the Middle East have received the least coverage over the past eight months, they may be interested to learn that apparently nothing newsworthy happened in Mauritania or Sudan, with both having received no coverage whatsoever. The next least newsworthy countries are Algeria and Oman. Jordan received less than a tenth of the coverage and exposure of its neighbour Israel.

Related articles:

BBC Israel focus in numbers (March 2013)

BBC Israel focus in numbers – April 2013

BBC Israel focus in numbers – May 2013

BBC Israel focus in numbers – June 2013

BBC Israel focus in numbers – July 2013

BBC Israel focus in numbers – August 2013

BBC Israel focus in numbers – September 2013

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