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virologist Christian Drosten
Photo:
Christophe Gateau / dpa
The pandemic has given the media a new type of expert: virologists.
There is hardly a talk show that did without Melanie Brinkmann, Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit or Hendrik Streeck in 2020.
However, the most sought-after virologist in the country was Christian Drosten from the Charité Berlin.
No other corona expert was mentioned as often in print and online media as he was.
According to a SPIEGEL analysis, Drosten had 3,029 hits in the Digas press database, which includes national and regional media as well as the online texts from zeit.de, spiegel.de and welt.de.
A huge lead over Lothar Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute (1543 hits) and the virologists Hendrik Streeck (725) and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit (484).
The German press, on the other hand, paid little attention to the stars of the coronaseptic scene, such as the doctor Wolfgang Wodarg, who described precautionary measures against the virus as "scaremongering".
Wodarg was mentioned 94 times, the microbiologist Sucharit Bhakdi, co-author of the controversial bestseller "Corona false alarm?" 112 times.
Often these articles were about fact checks or fake news.
Drosten dominated the reporting of German media from the beginning - also because of his Corona podcast on NDR.
However, there are also some differences in the national press.
Drosten has a particularly strong presence at the “tageszeitung” (“taz”), also at the “Zeit”, the SPIEGEL, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (“SZ”) and the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (“FAZ”).
In the case of »Bild« and the Berlin tabloid »BZ«, however, Drosten is much less quoted.
On the other hand, Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, a virologist, appears much more frequently in the two papers of the Springer group, "Bild" and "BZ", than in the other media.
With Clemens Wendtner, the »Süddeutsche« has a much-quoted local expert: He is the chief physician for infectious diseases and tropical medicine at the Munich Clinic Schwabing.
Drosten's omnipresence also made him an enemy of corona skeptics.
The "Bild" newspaper tried to discredit Drosten's assessments of the infectiousness of children - but he successfully defended himself via Twitter.
The media scientist Holger Wormer considers the focus on Drosten to be problematic despite his proven expertise.
He has seen journalists who have taken criticism of Drosten's work or statements as a lese majesty.
Really critical inquiries, such as Drosten's appearances on the NDR, are too rare, according to the professor of science journalism at TU Dortmund.
In addition, the pandemic raises numerous questions that virology alone can hardly answer competently.
Drosten was only a guest on talk shows like "Maybrit Illner" four times.
According to the industry portal Meedia, Brinkmann, Schmidt-Chanasit and Streeck each make 16 appearances.
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