Using the “financial crisis”

Using the “financial crisis”

Newspapers and magazines around the world are squeezing as many stories as possible from the financial crisis. Here are some numbers.

February 18, 2009 1:05 by Aarti Nagraj

We use the term “financial crisis” almost everyday. As do media outlets across the world. News of business, politics, life and living; everything is connected to the current situation in the global market. So we decided to conduct a little experiment to see how many times term is used.

We went to Google’s advanced search, and monitored how many times the term financial crisis was used by major dailies in their websites in the last 24 hours. We only included Google’s relevant results.

The National used the term 21 times in articles ranging from the UAE’s pearl business, to those describing how visa rules are blocking cabaret artistes.

Gulf News been stingier than The National with the term. According to Google, they used it 14 times in the last 24 hours, on local and international stories covering the EU, China and the US.

Khaleej Times used it the most – 32 times – in features such as a special feature on the 500^th anniversary of Protestant theologian, John Calvin’s birth, and an article questioning whether the UAE’s introduction of freehold visas will win back investors’ trust.

The term appeared 25 times in Emirates Business, mostly in articles describing news from the region.

The regional results are somewhere similar, but how often is the used (or abused) by international newspapers?

The New York Times has used the phrase 58 times in the last 24 hours, “financial crisis” has featured 57 times in The Guardian, 26 times in The Financial Times, three times on The Times, 22 times in The International Herald Tribune, 45 times in the Washington Post, and the maximum, 81 times in The Telegraph.

By the way, they also use the terms economic/financial slowdown, credit crunch, downturn and recession.