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News article18 May 2020

COVID-19 media surveillance - 18 May 2020

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

Geolocations mentioned in coronavirus media reports showing large clusters of media reports
Geolocations mentioned in coronavirus media reports showing large clusters of media 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:

  • "We cannot count on having a vaccine ready within a year and a half" (ethic)
  • "WHO finds no evidence of contagion from coronavirus by contact with objects" (abc)
  • "Merkel highlights the value of the critical press in times of the coronavirus" (dw)
  • "Modi’s popularity soars as India weathers the pandemic" (nytimes)
  • "'It eats him alive inside': Trump's latest attack shows endless obsession with Obama" (theguardian)
  • "A sitting president, riling the nation during a crisis" (nytimes)
  • "Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown. What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis – and what does it mean for the US?" (ft)
  • "Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus ‘game changer’ increasingly linked to deaths" (washingtonpost)
  • "Eric Trump accuses Democrats of "milking" coronavirus lockdowns to win the election" (axios)
  • "FDA halts Bill Gates coronavirus testing program" (thehill)
  • "How many people are dying of coronavirus in Mexico? It’s hard to say" (latimes)

The hashtag #conte trended in Italy after Prime Minister Conte’s press conference explaining the roadmap to ease restrictions in Italy.

In Germany, the hashtags #verschwoerungstheorien ("conspiracy theories" in the context of demonstrations in several German cities) and #bundesliga (following the first Bundesliga matches after the crisis) trended this weekend.

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

Ethic.es, Infobae, El Pais, Youtube and El Diario, and Le Monde and Le Parisien were among the most mentioned Spanish and French sources, respectively.

Extracted Quotes

Giuseppe Conte (Italy, Prime Minister):

"We're facing a calculated risk in the knowledge that the contagion curve may rise again"; "We have to accept it otherwise we will never be able to start up again".

Fernando Simón (Spain, Director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts):

"We always have doubts as to whether what we are seeing is what is really happening"; "It’s possible that there are chains of infections that haven’t been identified. As we gradually permit greater mobility, we could be exposed to imported cases, and all of this must be controlled with great care".

Fact Check

Fact checked: claims downplaying COVID-19

  • Fact checkers debunk a self-proclaimed Dallas nurse’s claim that patients who die of other causes are included in the city’s COVID-19 death tolls (afpfactcheck).

Fact checked: anti-Muslim claims

  • Indian fact checkers debunk a video claiming to show a Muslim spitting at a subway rider in an attempt to spread the novel coronavirus, reporting that the video is actually from August 2019 and has, therefore, no link to COVID-19 (thequint).

Fact checked: anti-vax claims

  • Fact checkers debunk claims that the flu vaccine increases the risk of coronavirus infection, reporting that according to the CDC, a “preponderance” of scientific and medical evidence exists to suggest that the flu vaccine does not affect people’s susceptibility to non-flu respiratory viruses (snopes).

Fact checked: conspiracy theories

  • Fact checkers debunk claims that a new US federal legislation to support COVID-19 testing and contact tracing "is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus" (politifact).
  • Fact checkers debunk claims that the Gates Foundation stands to make nearly £31.5 billion on a coronavirus vaccine in the UK, reporting that the Gates Foundation has pledged millions of dollars to companies developing potential coronavirus vaccines and that there is no evidence that the charity stands to profit from them (politifact).

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Contact

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

Related Content

Europe Media Monitor (EMM)

Medical Information System - MEDISYS

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Publication date
18 May 2020