3. IYPH
Outputs
3.4 News and media coverage wrap-up
3.4.1 Coverage figures, print and online news media: November 2019 – July 2021
25 languages (six official languages of the United Nations, plus Bengali, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Malayalam, Maltese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Swedish and Thai) from online news outlets, media coverage has been impressive.
The peak in media coverage was between January and February 2020, when a total of 1 753 articles were released (see Figure 1 ). However, in August 2020, articles reached a potential 856 million readers (see Figure 2). In total, media coverage potentially reached 4.4 billion readers during the entire IYPH period.
The data are based on a sample of articles identified by a keyword search (IYPH and FAO).
3.4.2 Overview of media coverage
The IYPH key messages were announced in the official launch event that took place on 2 December 2019 at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, with the active participation of FAO staff members, governments, plant health experts from the IPPC community and representatives of various stakeholder groups. The IYPH key messages were highlighted on media around the world: Infobae in Argentina, El País in Spain, Yahoo! Finance in the United States of America, The Times of India, Ansa in Italy, the United Nations News Centre, Nico News in Japan, Última Hora in Paraguay, Público in Portugal, the Islamic Republic News Agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among others.
The IYPH message on how protecting plant health can help end hunger, reduce poverty, protect the environment and boost economic development was also disseminated widely, with reports from The Reporter Ethiopia, The Times of India, La Repubblica in Italy, La Jornada in Mexico, Le Matin in Morocco, Vanguard in Nigeria, Público in Portugal, El Observador in Uruguay, WAM – Emirates News Agency in the United Arab Emirates, Forbes in the United States of America, Vanuatu Daily Post, Vatican News and many others.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a video message by His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales highlighting the “critical role” plants play in health and well-being received much attention. British news outlets, including the Daily Mail, Yahoo! News UK, The Argus and Oxford Mail, quoted the Prince: “From every angle, plants play an absolutely vital role in our existence, but the ultimate irony is, just as we are realizing this, we have also managed to engineer a global plant health crisis”.
On a similar note, AdnKronos in Italy and Food Ingredients First in Netherlands, among others, quoted the encouraging opening speech from the FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu: “Plants provide the core basis for life on Earth and are the single most important pillar of human nutrition”, adding that “healthy plants are not something that we can take for granted” however.
Radio stations around the world, including Radio RTL in Italy, Radio Televisión Española in Spain, Radio Bambers in Germany, Radio Santa Fe in Colombia, among others, dedicated airtime to the key messages and events of the IYPH. A number of podcast series recorded episodes dealing with the impact of plant health, including podcasts from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Agence Science Presses, CBC Listen, Radio24 in Italy and the BBC.