After a significant drop in the past year, the number of DPA breaking reports has risen again in 2022 under the impact of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. By mid-December, the German Press Agency had sent around 1,115 messages with the second highest priority – after the flash message – in its basic service. That is around 75 more than from January to mid-December 2021, but still significantly fewer than in the comparable period of the first Corona year 2020 with 1450 breaking news at the time.
The increase compared to the previous year is of course primarily due to the Ukraine war: around 380 breaking reports related directly to the events of the war or its political, social and above all economic consequences.
Lots of breaking news about war against Ukraine
At the beginning of the war on February 24 alone, DPA sent 35 brief information items of priority level 2 within 24 hours. No other event with such a density of breaking news on a single day is known of in the recent past. The previous record holder was March 13, 2020 with 31 breaking reports exclusively about Corona.
The pandemic itself, on the other hand, visibly lost importance this year: while there were still more than 600 urgent corona reports in the DPA basic service by the end of November in 2020, the number fell to almost 230 last year and even slightly more this year than 60
The Russian war against Ukraine is also reflected in the ranking of individuals with the most frequent urgent mentions: Russian President Vladimir Putin came in first with 42 mentions, followed by US President Joe Biden (35 mentions), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ( 30) and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj (24).
For the first time since Biden’s victory in the US presidential election in November 2020, DPA also sent a flash report this year, namely on September 8th on the death of the Queen. It was the 62nd priority 1 report in the history of the German Press Agency.