Foreign Perspective

China Rise,Top News of the 21st Century

(Reuters)
Updated: 2011-05-10 13:41

The British royal wedding has become one of the top 10 news stories of the 21st century, but has already been eclipsed by media coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden, according to a study released on Thursday.

Less than a week after U.S. President Barack Obama announced that U.S. forces had killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan, the bin Laden story had racked up more than 84 million citations in the global print and electronic media, social media sites and on the Internet.

The survey by the Global Language Monitor said the death of bin Laden was already the third biggest world news story of the 21st century.

By contrast, the April 29 marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton ranked in 5th place with more than 63 million citations worldwide, ahead of the media blitz surrounding the 2009 sudden death of Michael Jackson with about 56 million.

But the biggest news story around the world since January 2000 remains the rise of China as an economic and political power, the Global Language Monitor said.

The China story has about 300 million citations to date, followed by the election of Obama to the U.S. presidency with 123 million.

The Texas-based Global Language Monitor (GLM) used an algorithm to track citations of the biggest news stories on the top 750,000 world print and electronic media sites, as well as citations on the Internet.

The top 10 news stories of the 21st century, according to the GLM are;

1) The rise of China

2) Election of Barack Obama

3) Death of Osama bin Laden

4) Wikileaks

5) British royal wedding

6) Death of Michael Jackson

7) Sept 11. 2001 attacks on the United States.

8) Japanese quake/tsunami/nuclear crisis

9) Arab Spring uprisings

10)Global economic meltdown