Television coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic in Portugal: An exploratory study

Abstract

2020 will be remembered globally as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although this disease had emerged in China in the end of 2019, its global spread a few months later threatened the globalized society, causing serious social, political, and economic effects, not all yet understood. Journalism has been in crisis over the past few decades (Zelizer, 2004; 2009; 2017), but the coverage of this pandemic through diverse devices and screens (Deuze, 2019) brought a new vigor to the role of journalism. In Portugal, during a period of homely isolation, television played a role of social link (Wolton, 1994), demonstrating that it is still the dominant medium (ERC, 2016, 2019; OBERCOM, 2018; Statista, 2018). In this context, our tribute to Nelson Traquina has the aim of presenting, commenting, and discussing his contribution to the study of television journalism in Portugal by assessing the television coverage of this pandemic crisis. For this purpose, we have retrieved theoretical studies about the theories of news and empirical studies about HIV/AIDS done by Traquina (1993, 2002, 2004, 2010 and Traquina et al., 2001). We have empirically assessed both the lunchtime and evening television news services of the channels RTP1, SIC and TVI. We have built a database using a definition of assessment categories, which although was inspired by the work of Traquina about HIV/AIDS, was adapted to the specificities of this new disease. The results enable a discussion about the theories of news as “construction” (Traquina, 1993) and the role of routines in the production of news.