The global financial crisis: News item of the year in Canada
Montreal, December 16, 2009 - For the third consecutive year, Influence Communication has made public its annual summary of the news that captured the attention of the media in Canada over the past 12 months. Canadian News Review: 2009 Report© analyzes the trends in the news as well as all of the news items published or broadcast in Canada between January 1 and December 7, 2009. The study also reveals the results of similar analyses of the media in 160 countries around the world.
The financial crisis and the bankruptcies and recovery plans it triggered constituted the most widely covered news of 2009, with media prominence of 2.80%. The financial crisis alone accounted for 76% of all economic and financial news published or broadcast in Canada in 2009. The A(H1N1) virus and Canada's presence in Afghanistan ranked second and third respectively among news items garnering the greatest amount of attention from the Canadian media during the year.
Over a period of seven consecutive days, the top 15 news items in terms of coverage by the Canadian media were:
| Rank |
Event |
Peak period |
Media prominence score over seven days |
| 01 |
A(H1N1) flu virus |
November |
8.31% |
| 02 |
Barack Obama inauguration |
January |
7.14% |
| 03 |
2009 Grey Cup |
November |
4.90% |
| 04 |
Financial crisis |
January |
4.38% |
| 05 |
Federal budget |
January |
4.23% |
| 06 |
Michael Jackson memorial service |
July |
4.06% |
| 07 |
U.S. economic stimulus plan |
January |
3.68% |
| 08 |
Canada Day |
July |
3.60% |
| 09 |
NHL season opening |
September |
3.53% |
| 10 |
Gaza crisis and Israel/Palestine conflict |
January |
3.50% |
| 11 |
Remembrance Day |
November |
3.26% |
| 12 |
Barack Obama visit to Canada |
February |
3.10% |
| 13 |
Rio Tinto Alcan job cuts |
January |
2.86% |
| 14 |
Super Bowl |
January |
2.64% |
| 15 |
Canadian presence in Afghanistan |
November |
2.60% |
Internationally, close to one billion news items were collected during the analysis period. The global financial crisis (with media prominence of 6.6%), the inauguration of Barack Obama (2.9%) and the war in Afghanistan (2.6%) constituted the three news items most covered by the international media in 2009.
It comes as no surprise that Barack Obama was the world leader who attracted the greatest amount of media attention on an international scale, with 9.2% coverage. Nicolas Sarkozy was a distant second at 1.8%, while Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, was ranked 18th. Michael Jackson (3.5%), Tiger Woods (3.0%) and Ronaldo (2.6%) constituted the non-political figures most covered by the media in 2009.
About Influence Communication
Established in 2001, Influence is Canada's premier news information broker. From its head office in Montreal, Influence conducts media monitoring for the majority of Canada's largest corporations. With its Interactive Communication Environment (ICE) system and network of partners across Canada and in 160 countries, Influence offers comprehensive monitoring, aggregation and analysis of print and broadcast media and more than 7,000 Internet news sites. Each day, Influence collects over 700,000 news items from around the world.
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