For eight 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: 2012 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 17, 2012.

“In Quebec, after one week, you’d have to do a top 200 search of the headlines to find it”, Jean-François Dumas, of the media monitoring firm Influence Communication, told me.

A company doing media analysis, Influence Communications, says its research shows that a contretemps over the application of Quebec’s language laws to the menu of a Montreal Italian restaurant is generating far more ink than Quebec Premier Pauline Marois’ recent trip searching for outside investment. 

"Every time the media mentioned, as an example, the visit of Pauline Marois in New York, we got 60 mentions for the Pastagate," said Jean-Francois Dumas, president of Influence Communication, when asked to compare the public-relations impact.

The study by Montreal media-monitoring company Influence Communication says the only Canadian stories to get more international coverage than Magnotta this year were the Keystone XL pipeline and the purchase of Nexen Inc. by the Chinese, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Co.

Caroline Roy of Influence Communication has been monitoring coverage during this election. She observes that only one per cent of TV, radio, print and Web the coverage has been about culture.

A study published this week by Quebec-based Influence Communication reports that 39% of Quebec news stories now involve the student strike.