The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a vertical collapse in television news coverage of Covid-19 in the last days of February this year from which it has yet to recover.

Looking globally, mentions began to decline sharply in early January as attention shifted to the potential for impending war in Europe, but has stabilized since early March at around half its pre-war level.

Combined, these two graphs remind us that the global media system tends to be subtractive rather than additive – as new stories emerge they displace other stories rather than run alongside them.