CorpComms Magazine

The media's obsession with the hacking scandal was barely shaken by the news of Amy Winehouse's untimely death or the atrocious shootings in Norway, new analysis by media intelligence group Precise reveals.

Indeed, in the week of the Norwegian tragedy, hacking still accounted for almost twice as many articles in the UK's printed media as the shootings.

Britain's newspapers wrote 243 articles about the death of Amy Winehouse, 222 articles about the Norwegian shootings and 437 articles about phone hacking in the week ending 28 July.

Indeed, 2,671 articles about phone hacking appeared in Britain's newspapers last July but the debt crisis in Greece, which threatened to undermine the European Union, accounted for just 107 articles while the worst drought in East Africa in 60 years, which is creating a famine emergency threatening tens of thousands of lives, was written about just 191 times.

The analysis also reveals that the broadsheets have consistently written more about the hacking scandal that the tabloids.

In the week that the Murdochs appeared before the Culture, Media & Sport select committee, Britain's broadsheets wrote 674 articles on the subject, only marginally higher than the 657 articles written in the week that it emerged that the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler had been hacked. Indeed, throughout July 1,960 articles on hacking appeared in Britain's broadsheets.

Coverage of the Murdochs' appearance attracted 249 articles in the tabloids, while the revelation about Dowler's phone generated 236 articles.

But readers of Britain's tabloids would be forgiven for being unaware of the Greek debt crisis as it was covered just 16 times over the month, while the famine in East Africa was written about 98 times - virtually half the coverage received by Winehouse's death.

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