As chaos broke out over the sale of prescription medicines, Health Minister Aurelijus Veryga undoubtedly became the most talked-about minister in both traditional media and social media. The media monitoring and analytics company Mediaskopas decided to check how the number of mentions of ministers changed once the scandal began. In the first three weeks of November, the Health Minister was mentioned in 1,397 reports in the traditional media, accounting for as much as 25.7% of all minister mentions.
By comparison, in October A. Veryga was mentioned in 1,207 reports, accounting for 15.4%. Seeing such popularity for the Health Minister, one might ask whether he managed to outshine perhaps the most frequently mentioned politician in the media — Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis? Despite the fact that S. Skvernelis was mentioned in 2,051 reports in November, compared with A. Veryga’s 1,397, Mediaskopas rankings show that A. Veryga can enjoy a significantly higher number of mentions in articles and headlines themselves than other ministers, and even than the Prime Minister.
