Below is our regular end of month count of articles appearing on the Middle East page of the BBC News website 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 report and its level of exposure in terms of the number of days it stayed up on the site.
December saw the appearance of several categories of articles which have not been included in this count: the special feature on Jihadist violence and its accompanying material, generalized ‘end of year sum up’ articles such as this one, predictions for the coming year and reports relating to Turkey which is not one of the countries defined by the BBC as being part of the Middle East.
The country receiving most coverage and exposure on the BBC News website’s Middle East page during December was Iraq (mostly in connection with ISIS), followed by Israel and then Syria. Egypt came fourth in terms of coverage and exposure and in fifth place the PA controlled territories and the Gaza Strip, with reporting focusing on Christmas and the PA’s UNSC bid.
This is the twenty-second consecutive month in which Israel has consistently remained in the top five countries receiving the most exposure on the BBC News website’s Middle East page. For sixteen of those twenty-two months, Israel has been among the three most covered countries among the twenty states and two territories making up the Middle East according to the BBC.
In an upcoming post we will look at the other end of the scale: the Middle East countries which were least covered by the BBC in 2014.
Related Articles:
BBC Israel focus in numbers: November 2014
BBC Israel focus in numbers: October 2014 (includes links to all previous months)