Abstract
Abstract Between 1 January and 13 March 2020, Flemish media gradually increased their attention to the new Corona virus and the associated COVID-19 disease. This coverage included a lot of attention to the past, as history offered many opportunities for explaining the emerging crisis. In order to better understand this relation between history and news, this article analyses the virus-related coverage of three Flemish media outlets and the historical references included in it. The research shows that, in some media, history was included in up to 65 % of the news articles concerning Corona, with the SARS-epidemic of 2002–2003 being the dominant point of reference. However, as time progressed it became obvious that this reliance on SARS led to an understandable, yet highly unfortunate mistake, forcing the three media to diversify their historical references. As such, the consequences of the recent comparisons between SARS and COVID-19 offer a warning for using the past in the next stages of the crisis.
Highlights
The recent covid-19 pandemic has already received an extreme amount of attention in national and international media.[1]
History has provided an important reference point for this coverage, as articles, interviews, columns, and op-eds have relied on several historical cases to discuss current events
The research shows that, in some media, history was included in up to 65% of the news articles concerning Corona, with the sars-epidemic of 2002–2003 being the dominant point of reference
Summary
The Corona-related coverage of three major Flemish news outlets was observed from 1 January 2020 to 13 March 2020: the national medium vrt nws, and the newspapers De Standaard and De Morgen. De Morgen has both an online and a paper presence, and is owned by the private concern dpg Media.[8] Jointly, vrt nws, De Standaard and De Morgen cater to a large part of the (higher-educated) Flemish population.[9]. The last week of the monitored period proved especially decisive, as the Belgian and Flemish governments took the first serious virus-related measures, leading newspapers and other media to provide quick online information about the policy’s content and impact. 10 The full ‘raw data’ set and the ‘quantitative data’ set are available on the Corvus website, www.corvushc.be/reports
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