Hi all, I am extremely sorry for sending the responses at the last minuted as I was in self quarantine for some time after exposed ti the naval virus. Now feel ok. Here is my response
https://twitter.com/shiharaneez/status/1251536170585952261
This is a local story about the covid19 threat in Sri Lanka. This local private channel backed the newly elected president in his presidential campaign last November. The situation in Sri Lanka is such that coronavirus spreading forced the new president’s ruling party to postpone the parliamentary election scheduled for April 25. The pr5esident’s party was aiming for a two-third majority and he still has a massive support. However, with the covid19 spreading, the sentiment has changed drastically and economic hardships are expected to dent the current government popularity. So many legislators of the ruling party had been stating the election should go ahead sooner than later citing many examples including South Korea, which had an election last week amid the pandemic.
This local TV channel showed a graph (link is given) in a way to convince the people that the coronavirus threat was diminishing. They choose a wrong measurement to do that. They select total covid19 detected people on a weekly basis in the first five weeks up until April 14 (which were 42, 59, 41, 43 & 48) and then they showed the number of detected people on a daily basis for April 15, 15, 17, and 18 (which were 5,0,6,4). This gave a perception that the government had succeeded in the prevention of covid19 spreading strategies. Before this TV channel came up with the graph, the government health minister’s statement on “coronavirus will be controlled by April 19” was given wide publicity in all the media. However, we explained the public this was wrong and next five days, there 120 patients detected. Later the owner of the channel apologized and promised to correct the error,
The graph really damaged the public perception of the TV channel as well as the government’s strategies in covid19 spreading control. More people started to see the numbers and realized that it was not over and in fact it was worsening. People started to criticize the positive media coverage in public.
Shihar