This week’s media round up

Economic concerns led this week’s news agenda, initially with chancellor George Osbourne downgrading the UK’s growth prospects for 2012 to 0.7 per cent in his autumn budget statement as well as admitting the deficit will take longer to eradicate. In addition to these concerns, Wednesday played host to the largest public sector strikes for over 35 years as staff walked out over a dispute relating to pension reforms.

A fascinating side-effect of the strikes was a media storm relating to comments made by the controversial broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson who asserted that the individuals involved should be “lined up and shot”. In a completely unrelated story, sales of this year’s Top Gear book and Mr Clarkson’s own DVD have skyrocked.

Despite these widely covered topics, the most frequent articles of the week were tributes of the former professional footballer and Wales manager Gary Speed, who tragically took his own life on Sunday.

For the week ending Sunday 4th December, the following number of articles were written in mainstream media according to Journalisted.com

• Fans and footballers pay tribute to Wales manager Gary Speed, 462 articles
• The Leveson Inquiry into press ethics and phone hacking, 204 articles (including evidence given by Alastair Campbell, 65 articles, Christopher Jefferies, 26 articles, and Alec Owens, 15 articles)
• Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers take to the streets to protest against pension reforms, 182 articles (including 125 articles on Jeremy Clarkson’s controversial comments made on The One Show)
• The storming of the British Embassy in Tehran prompts William Hague to expel Iranian diplomats in UK, 155 articles
• The BBC ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ award attracts criticism over the lack of nominations for sportswomen, 117 articles

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Now we take a step back to look at the more quirky stories that have overshadowed more “serious” ones.

• The arrival of Giant pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang in Edinburgh sparked 60 articles compared with Hilary Clinton’s historic visit to Burma, the first senior US official to do so in over half a century.
• Robbie Savage’s departure from Strictly Come Dancing, 52 articles, versus stories of severe violence marking elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 20 articles.
• Misha B misses out on a place in the X Factor final, 57 articles, versus Katia Zatuliveter, who worked for Mike Hancock MP and was accused of spying, wins right to stay in Britain, 34 articles

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Finally, we look at that politician that has been turning the most heads. In a week that contained an autumn budget statement and the largest public sector strikes for a generation, chancellor George Osbourne takes top spot featuring in a gargantuan 815 articles, a 139 per cent increase on last week.

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