Return to the full report, The Pope Meets the Press: Media Coverage of the Clergy Abuse Scandal

This chart shows English-language newspapers' coverage of the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal since 2002, along with key events that prompted increases in news coverage. In 2002, U.S. newspapers published more stories on the scandal than European papers did. But since late 2008, coverage has spiked in European papers.

Hover over the orange dots on the timeline to see the events that prompted increased news coverage.

Data points represent number of stories that mention the clergy abuse scandal.
The data is derived from a Nexis keyword search of major world newspapers. All papers in the sample are English-language only.

*Years have been divided into trimesters: January-April, May-August and September-December.

Return to the full report, The Pope Meets the Press: Media Coverage of the Clergy Abuse Scandal