Heat maps of the world, colored by news-agencies' reporting on each country

Avi sez, "Here's a cool project that maps the world according to the attention each country gets from major western mainstream media outlets- interesting that Israel with a population of 7.2 million usually ends up getting more media attention than India with a population of 1.12 billion."

(Shown here: the New York Times's heatmap) Link (Thanks, Avi!)

[#1 posted by Slowermo , March 25, 2008 5:42 AM]

Skimming headlines too fast led me to believe at first this was the color weather forcasters used in the given country for a specific temperature. Which would be interesting too.

[#2 posted by PukeBazooka , March 25, 2008 6:20 AM]

Interesting to see the amount of coverage that UK papers devote to Australia compared to the US ... they sure do like reporting on goings-on down under.

[#3 posted by Belac , March 25, 2008 7:12 AM]

I'm not surprised that Israel gets more attention than India, nor, were I Indian, would I be jealous. News media attention to foreign countries is based on crises, not population, and the only way India could reasonably catch up would be in, say, another Pakistan crisis over Kashmir.

Happy, and bored, be they who don't live in interesting times.

[#4 posted by yish , March 25, 2008 7:23 AM]

I thought crisis was a temporary state.

[#5 posted by Silva , March 25, 2008 7:39 AM]

What a disappearing rich, blonde little english girl can do for the coverage stats of your country...

[#6 posted by Enochrewt , March 25, 2008 8:23 AM]

This makes me want to move to Iceland.

[#7 posted by Avi Solomon , March 25, 2008 9:57 AM]

What about coverage of 'systemic' crises like corruption or traffic accident deaths?

[#8 posted by Carnadine , March 25, 2008 12:18 PM]

Part of the reason Israel gets so much coverage is because it's one of the few places where reporters can live in a modern, practically European city, drive out to the war zone in an hour or two, report all day and be home in time for dinner.

[#9 posted by wd45 , March 25, 2008 12:45 PM]

there is a similar clip on YouTube about this from Public Radio International's CEO...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfiT3XqtcbE

[#10 posted by Antinous , March 25, 2008 4:32 PM]

I'm not surprised that Israel gets more attention than India

India has been hit by major terrorist bombings. One state is virtually run by Maoist guerrillas. Hindus and Muslims riot and burn down each other's mosques and temples. High ranking politicos go on trial for murder every couple of weeks. Prime Ministers get assassinated. Floods and famines kill millions. People get eaten by tigers, trampled by elephants and thrown off their own balconies by monkeys. India has far more crises than Israel. You just don't hear about them because they're underreported.

[#11 posted by minamisan , March 25, 2008 7:00 PM]

@Pukebazooka:

yeah, but once you subtract all the UK stories about Australia that involve someone being attacked by some kind of animal or a UFO sighting, or a UFO sighting by a kangaroo, etc, the result is virtually zero.

[#12 posted by Michael R. Bernstein , March 27, 2008 5:22 PM]

ObNitPick: These are cartograms, not heat maps.