BBC Israel focus in numbers: June and July 2014

The pace of events over the last couple of months has meant that our usual end of month round-up of coverage on the BBC News website got put on hold. Below are the counts of articles appearing on the website’s Middle East page during June and July 2014 according to the twenty-two countries and 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 new report and its level of exposure in terms of the number of days it stayed up on the site. Filmed reports and ‘related articles’ are not included in the count.

June 2014:

Table June

The stories behind those numbers were many and varied with the take-over of parts of Iraq by ISIS accounting for nearly all the articles relating to that country and putting it first in terms of coverage. Presidential elections in Syria and Egypt accounted for many of the reports concerning those two countries in second and third place respectively and the trial of Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt which received extensive coverage from the BBC also accounted for a proportion of that country’s coverage. The BBC did not begin covering the story of the kidnappings of three Israeli teenagers in Gush Etzion until two days after they went missing but much of the latter half of the month’s reports on Israel were devoted to that topic. Whilst the BBC defines the Golan Heights as a separate territory, its items on that area were in fact about Israel’s reaction to the killing of an Israeli teenager near the border. Elections and political violence in Libya accounted for most of the stories concerning that country which came fifth in terms of the amount of coverage.

Other June stories included the World Cup; all of the reports on Algeria related to that topic along with several of those on Iran. A significant proportion of the stories from Qatar concerned the FIFA investigation into its World Cup bid. The Palestinian Authority unity government also got coverage at the beginning of the month and quite a few of the stories concerning Saudi Arabia were about the outbreak of MERS there.  All the reports on the UAE related to its airline’s purchase of a stake in Alitalia. Sharp-eyed readers will note that for the first time since we began recording BBC coverage of Middle East countries in March 2013, reports on Sudan appeared in June 2014.

July 2014: 

Table July

For the second consecutive month Iraq got the most coverage on the BBC News website in July with most of the reports again relating to the topic of ISIS. Israel came second in terms of coverage with the majority of reports relating to Operation Protective Edge and the influx of additional BBC correspondents to the region very apparent. Syria was once again in third place for the second month running, Egypt fourth and Iran in fifth place with a significant proportion of the reports relating to the topic of the P5+1 talks. Despite continuing political violence in Libya, that country came seventh in terms of coverage.

Table sikkum

Related Articles:

BBC Israel focus in numbers: May 2014

BBC Israel focus in numbers: April 2014

BBC Israel focus in numbers: March 2014  (includes links to all previous months) 

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