An increase in media interest in UFOs?

Regarding media reporting of UFO stories:

In response to many people proclaiming that UFOs are being "finally taken seriously" by media and that UFO stories are now "mainstream," because I've been studying the phenomenon for several decades, my intuition was that this claim was not true.

I therefore took some time to do an online search of the keyword "UFO" in an online media database, looking at both wire stories and in newspapers for the period 1997/98-2017/18 (two decades).

The results show that while wire stories (in blue) about UFOs have increased during the past two decades, 2016/17 had more stories than 2017/18, so that the recent news coverage isn't higher than last year.

The newspaper database (in red, and the bar graph) is even more obviously at odds with the claims, as the number of newspaper stories about UFOs 20 years ago was almost double today's numbers.

The view that recent UFO stories implies a surge in media interest is equivalent to media attention concerning some publicized earthquakes means that seismic activity worldwide has increased, or that a few traffic fatalities in one neighbourhood means that neighbourhood is no longer safe.

Statistics show that average numbers have not increased, at least according to a very simple, "quick and dirty" count of articles.

A more rigorous analysis is needed to verify this and to dig down into the media stats in more detail.