Corona Daily 229: The Year’s Biggest News Story

In April this year, the few times I ventured out on the roads, shopping bags in hand, a mask covering my face; the talk on the streets stunned me. Whether the conversation was between people I knew or strangers, there was only one topic: the coronavirus. Nobody talked any longer about cricket, Bollywood, politics, TV debates, border skirmishes, illegal immigrants – nothing, just the coronavirus.

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The Economist published a fascinating analysis in its last week’s issue. It tried to answer the question: has the covid pandemic been the biggest news story ever? The Economist was founded in 1843. The magazine has all issues available in digital form for the past 178 years. Its editors requested the New York Times to join in the research. The New York Times made its archives available from its starting year 1851.

The research analysts combed through every article published in those two newspapers by inserting keywords for each year. (Exhausting, but not impossible any more in the digital world).

Economist published its first article on the novel coronavirus on 16 January. At the end of January, covid-19 appeared on its cover. Between February and April, ten consecutive weekly issues had virus on its cover. By late March, 80% of the published stories in Economist included the word covid-19 or coronavirus.

In 2020, covid-19 related stories had a 47% share in Economist and 46% in the New York Times.

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The same analysis found that the Great Depression in the 1930s and the 2008 crash had news coverage of less than 20%. The Y2K problem was the big story of the year, but could reach only 30%. The words internet and online, although a rage in the twenty-first century, have never figured in more than 20% of the stories in any year. The fall of the Berlin wall (1989) was mentioned in less than 10% stories. Fall of the British Empire with India’s independence in 1947 was surprisingly little worthy of news. The Spanish flu’s (1918-20) coverage on both sides of the Atlantic was fairly limited.

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In the past 170 years, only two stories were bigger in The Economist.

The First World War was obviously not called that until the Second World War happened. The share of Economist stories referring to the Great War, as it was called then, reached 53% in 1915.  The Second World War was also in the news throughout, reaching 54% in 1941. Since America was an ocean away from the wars, the New York Times stories with the word “war” peaked at 39% (1918) and 37% (1942).

Covid-19 is the biggest story of the year ever for the New York Times, and with the exception of the two World Wars, for The Economist.

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Newspapers are often accused of focusing on bad news. I think that is simply a reflection of human nature. When we gossip, we rarely compliment the absent people we talk about. Similarly, public fear since the start of the pandemic is often reflected in the newspapers.  

In March, tabloids often used the phrase “killer virus”. One article in The Telegraph reproduced on-the-ground reports from Wuhan: “Mask-wearing patients fainting in the street. Hundreds of fearful citizens lining cheek by jowl, at risk of infecting each other, in narrow hospital corridors as they wait to be treated by doctors in forbidding white hazmat suits. A fraught medic screaming in anguish.”

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Here is wishing that covid-19 is no longer the biggest news story in the forthcoming year.

Ravi