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  • News article
  • 30 July 2020
  • 3 min read

COVID-19 media surveillance - 30 July 2020

This media surveillance collects articles reported through publicly available web sites.

Geolocations mentioned in coronavirus media coverage showing large clusters of news reports.
Geolocations mentioned in coronavirus media coverage showing large clusters of news reports.
© European Union, 2020, EMM/MEDISYS

This media surveillance collects articles reported through publicly available web sites.

It is created with the Europe Media Monitor (EMM).

The selection and placement of stories are determined automatically by a computer program.

Headlines

Twitter

The following news were found among the most mentioned/retweeted items:

  • "Twitter penalizes Donald Trump Jr. for posting hydroxychloroquine misinformation amid coronavirus pandemic" (washingtonpost)
  • "Google to keep employees home until summer 2021 amid coronavirus pandemic. search-engine giant pushes back return to normalcy" (wsj)
  • "One question still dogs Trump: Why not try harder to solve the coronavirus crisis?" (washingtonpost)
  • "Social media giants remove viral video with false coronavirus claims that Trump retweeted" (cnn)
  • "Three-Quarters of recovered coronavirus patients have heart damage months later, study finds" (people)
  • "Louie Gohmert, who refused to wear a mask, tests positive for coronavirus. The Texas Republican received the diagnosis during a pre-screening procedure at the White House on Wednesday morning." (politico)
  • "Brazil's Bolsonaro accused of 'crimes against humanity' over coronavirus" (newsweek)

The most mentioned English sources were the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times and Politico.

CNN (Spanish Version), El Diario, Infobae, RT (Spanish Version) and El Confiedencial, and Le Monde and Le Parisien were among the most mentioned Spanish and French sources, respectively.

Extracted Quotes

Tedros Adhanom (WHO, Director-General):

"When I declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January... there were less than 100 cases outside of China, and no deaths"; "Covid-19 has changed our world. It has brought people, communities and nations together, and driven them apart".

Fact Check

Fact checked: health claims

  • Fact checkers debunk a viral video claiming that masks are ineffective in mitigating transmission of COVID-19 (factcheck.org).
  • Fact checkers debunk claims that nasal swab testing is dangerous because it might damage the blood-brain barrier (afpnapravoumiru).
  • Fact checkers debunk Donald Trump’s claims that students "don’t catch [the coronavirus] easily; they don’t bring it home easily", reporting that while the youngest students seem to face a lower risk to themselves and of passing the virus to others, several studies find that high schoolers catch and spread the virus much like adults (politifact).

Fact checked: anti-vax claims

  • Fact checkers debunk claims that Bill Gates admitted that thousands of people will die from the new COVID-19 vaccine, reporting that Gates actually talked about the number of people who could experience complications from the vaccine, which, according to his predictions, would be one in 10,000 (afpfactual).
  • Fact checkers debunk claims that the COVID-19 vaccine will change recipients’ DNA and “hook us all up to an artificial intelligence interface” (bbcrealitycheck).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

  • Fact checkers debunk German physician and politician Wolfgang Wodarg’s claims that the pandemic is the result of systemic corruption in the scientific community and the media, that the coronavirus is not new and not more dangerous than the flu, and that the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous and will cause genetic mutation (stopfake).
  • Fact checkers debunk claims that the pandemic was planned by the Rockefeller Foundation (faktograf).

Download PDF

  • 2 FEBRUARY 2022
coronavirus_media_analysis_20200730hub.pdf

Contact

Mail to JRC-EMM-SUPPORTatec [dot] europa [dot] eu (subject: COVID-19%20media%20surveillance) (JRC-EMM-SUPPORT[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

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Details

Publication date
30 July 2020