One year of Covid: the news is still in the trenches
A year after the initial lockdown, with 11 regions turning red and an average of more than 20,000 new cases per day, the contagion’s chronicle is imposing itself almost as forcefully, claiming 32 headlines. Faced with the dramatic numbers of Covid-19 victims, which surpassed the 100,000-death threshold on Monday, the newspapers relaunched the institutions’ appeals, accepting the additional restrictions in light of the new Prime Minister Draghi’s turnaround in the vaccination campaign.
President Mattarella, summoned to the hospital Spallanzani in Rome on Tuesday, stands in line to receive the first dose of the vaccine as a normal citizen of his age: openings for Tg Rai, Tg4, and Tg5. Appreciation for the example set by the Head of State, as well as Mentana, who used the occasion to lash out against those – both institutional and non-institutional – who have used their position to “jump the queue.” Still on the subject of vaccines, much attention has been drawn to the slowdown in distribution across Europe as a result of manufacturer failures. The withdrawal of an AstraZeneca batch in response to a number of suspicious deaths in Sicily elicits strong reactions and discouragement, with Tg4 in the headlines speaking of a “bomb” on the pharmaceutical company; Tg3, Tg5, and Tg La7 devote to the news the opening of Thursday, stating, however, that this is a precautionary measure, but that the treatments remain safe.
Party politics were unavoidably present in the background. Tg4 demonstrates a greater sensitivity to the Democratic Party’s divisions, devoting an opening to the return from France of Enrico Letta, who is set to take over the secretariat on Sunday, and lashing out at the 5 Stelle led by Conte. Finally, there were only three mentions of the only opposition party, Fratelli d’Italia, with its leader, Giorgia Meloni.
The tenth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster receives four headline mentions and limited in-depth coverage. The disagreements within the British Royal Household, with Meghan Markle’s interview-denunciation and the subsequent reactions of Buckingham Palace, sparked more interest, with 10 mentions: there was gossip, but there were also precise reflections on an institution that remains one of the cornerstones of British society.
The final challenge for Luna Rossa, who returned to the Americans Cup after 21 years, received a lot of attention on the 8 p.m. news. On the other hand, there was little coverage of immigration, which was too often based on the statements of the politician in office. Tg4’s frivolity on Monday in proposing a report on the Gregoretti case – a clear “copy and paste” of an article in Il Giornale – ended up putting expressions like “sea taxi” in Minister Lamorgese’s mouth, which were never actually uttered, confusing them with the much more acidic and sided comments of the piece’s author.
