Obama election tops all news stories since Year 2000
More than double all the other major news events COMBINED
Does a new decade begin January 20th?
Austin, TX December 29, 2008 (MetaNewswire) – The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States tops all major news stories since the year 2000 according to a analysis released by the Global Language Monitor (www.LanguageMonitor.com). In fact citations of Barack Obama in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, and throughout the blogosphere more than double the other main stories of the last decade combined. These include in descending order: the Iraq War, the Beijing Olympics, the Financial Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the death of Pope John Paul II, the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks and the Asian Tsunami.
| Media, Internet & Blogosphere | |
| Rank | Story |
| 1 | Obama |
| 2 | Iraq War |
| 3 | Beijing Olympics |
| 4 | Financial Tsunami |
| 5 | Hurricane Katrina |
| 6 | Pope John Paul II |
| 7 | 9/11 Terrorist Attacks |
| 8 | S. Asian Tsunami |
When separating out the global print and electronic media alone, GLM found that more stories have appeared about the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States than the number of stories about Hurricane Katrina (No. 2), the Financial Tsunami (No. 3), and the Iraq War (No. 4) combined. Next on the list of top stories since the Year 2000 include The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks (No. 5), the Beijing Olympics (No. 6), the Death of Pope John Paul II (No.7), and the South Asian Tsunami (No.8)
The stories were measured in the print and electronic media for a one year period after the event.
| Print and Electronic Media | |
| Rank | Story |
| 1 | Obama |
| 2 | Hurricane Katrina |
| 3 | Financial Tsunami |
| 4 | Iraq War |
| 5 | 9/11 Terrorist Attacks |
| 6 | Beijing Olympics |
| 7 | Pope John Paul II |
| 8 | S. Asian Tsunami |
““The historical confluence of events in the year 2008 is unprecedented. Aside from Obama’s election, we witnessed the Financial Tsunami which appears to be a vast restructuring of the world economic order, and the Beijing Olympics, which can be viewed as the unofficial welcoming of China into the world community as a nation of the first rank,” said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of GLM. “This lends some credence to the idea that on January 20th, 2009 we are about to embark on the second decade of the second millennium.
To the popular mind, History rarely follows chronology: the Fifties ended with JFK’s Assassination in 1963; the Sixties with the Nixon’s resignation in ‘74; the Eighties with the fall of the Berlin Wall; while the Nineties, as well as the 20th century persisted until 9/11/2001.