Inaccurate claims about a cartoon depicting people inside one-person vehicles with transparent covers have surfaced online. Unlike social media posts, there is no evidence that the image, published in a 1962 issue of Italian magazine La Domenica del Corriere, was intended to “get a glimpse of what the world might look like in 2022”.
A tweet making this claim about the image has been retweeted over 20,700 times (here). Another recent example can be seen (here)
Similar claims linking the illustration to the COVID-19 pandemic have been addressed by several fact-checking organizations in 2020 (here here)
La Domenica del Corriere was a weekly supplement to the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Serra. The Corriere della Sera Foundation, according to its website, keeps an archive with “all the covers of the magazine”. (here).
The Corriere della Sera Foundation did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Reuters found no evidence that this cartoon referred to 2022. (here) or public health measures to address the spread of COVID-19, as interpreted by some users (here)
The cartoon showed an imaginary vehicle proposed by the Italian illustrator Walter Molino to fight traffic.
A 2014 blog post by Eduardo Poeta delved into the story behind the image. According to Poeta, the illustration was a back cover published on December 16, 1962 (here). The cover of this issue, also seen in the article, depicts a traffic jam on what looks like the same street and a man standing on top of a car.
The text visible in the lower right corner of the image provides more context. Originally in Italian, it translates to: “Shall we go around town like this?” Here’s how the traffic problem in cities could be improved, if not entirely solved: instead of today’s bulky cars, tiny single-occupancy cars that take up minimal space and are called ‘singles’. Walter Molino imagined how the same street as the first table would look if the new solution were to be adopted on a large scale.
VERDICT
Missing context. The cover refers to an imaginary one-person vehicle for fighting traffic, not a story “forecasting what the world might look like in 2022.”
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Learn more about our social media post verification workhere.