Which global media outlets to look at?
We’re working on a new episode which will look at how COP 29 in Azerbaijan was represented in the media - we’re particularly interested in the representation of COP being held in ‘petro-states’. I wanted to look at which media outlets might have been ‘most influential’, but this opens up loads of questions about how to find such an index.
Whilst looking for such a list, I found this: 50 Leading Media Outlets for News Coverage in 2025
This list, published by PR Lab, writes about ‘leading media outlets for news coverage’ and ’top news outlets’. It states that ‘quality journalism is still needed and relied upon by many today’. It makes a distinction between ‘audience numbers’ and ‘credibility’. As a PR firm, their interest is clearly in understanding media outlets on multiple criteria, but the ranking system used for the list isn’t clear. Nonetheless, this does give us a starting point.
The top three news outlets listed are:
CNN - as ‘the most-watched news channel in the world, reaching 212 countries and 347 million households’
BBC - as ‘one of the most respected’
NYT - as ‘the most significant news website in the US’
We’ll probably take these three as sources for the purposes of the episode, but the issue of influence and how to measure it is intriguing. Who is influenced? Who influences the media outlets?