by Christine Simone
The prevailing view among Armenians is that media attention about Armenia is generally sparse. There is widespread frustration that the world is largely unaware of what is happening in Armenia. In the last two months the media coverage has been exceptional, but this has been due to the extremely grave conditions in Armenia.
AGBU's New York office of the Armenian Information Service conducted an analysis of the 1992 media coverage of Armenia, Somalia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Israel, and Estonia. The results are surprising.
After surveying over 750 international English version newspapers, wire services, and magazines, in addition to ABC and CNN news, we learned that there were 13,624 stories about Armenia in 1992. There were 45,286 stories about Bosnia-Hercegovina; 21,708 stories about Somalia; 73,150 stories about Israel; and 8,951 stories about Estonia.
As we were surprised by the large number of articles about Armenia and the less than expected difference between the number of stories on Armenia and Somalia or Bosnia, we took a look at where the articles were appearing.
While press coverage of events in Armenia has substantially increased in the last three years (1992-13,624; 1991-7,429; 1990-5,521), two things are clear from the news analysis. The number of times a subject must be mentioned before it grasps the public's attention is enormous and more importantly, it is not only how many stories have been written, but where those stories are appearing.
