For almost two years now, humanity has been involuntarily participating in a large experiment with different levels of investigation. The development of the most important question – the course of the pandemic – is presented in terms of incidences, reproductive numbers and deaths. Another level – the public opinion on the pandemic – is, however, measured by the mood of the population, our interest in the development of this huge misery, that doesn’t want to end.
You can read a lot about the latter from the reporting. For example, that attention behaved in waves, similar to the number of infections – but not always synchronously. “There was a rather loose connection between the intensity of media coverage of the pandemic and the intensity of the infection,” is a finding by “One-sided? Uncritical? Close to the government? “, a study on the quality of media coverage in the pandemic.
These media researchers from Mainz and Munich created this on behalf of the Rudolf Augstein Foundation. More than 5,000 articles from eleven leading media were evaluated between January 1, 2020 and April 30, 2021; articles from newspapers, online offers and four television news formats were examined. Also the Southgerman newspaper belongs to it.
Lauterbach was probably also a frequently quoted expert because the media valued his tough line in the fight against the pandemic
The quality of the reporting was measured against six criteria: relevance, diversity, objectivity, correctness, balance and classification. The result was a comprehensive and also critical picture of the corona reporting.
When it comes to diversity, the study found there was a strong focus on politicians. Doctors and scientists were mentioned less often in the reports, while those affected by the infection and corona skeptics hardly appeared. In addition: “Among the, in the broadest sense of the word, ‘pandemic explainers’, the virologist Christian Drosten dominated for a long time, but was increasingly replaced by the SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach.”
The researchers note here that Lauterbach’s expertise is less likely to explain why he was increasingly replacing virological experts as contact persons for journalists from the second wave of pandemics. “Rather, Lauterbach was probably also an expert often quoted in the media because many media knew and valued his tough line in the fight against the pandemic.”
How should the media behave in a pandemic?
In their assessment of the dangers of the pandemic, the media were generally more in agreement. Control measures were mostly rated as adequate or even insufficient. “The fact that the measures went too far was more of a minority position in the media.” Especially from the second wave of the pandemic, the media would only have reported comparatively rarely about the negative economic or health consequences of the pandemic measures. “Harsh and increasingly harsher from October 2020” were the judgments of political actors.
The way in which these results are assessed, according to the study’s authors, depends largely on the role that the news media are assigned in crises. Should the media address critics and negative side effects of measures, even if this may reduce the social acceptance of these regulations?
In spite of the need to warn, the authors finally suggest that, especially in unsafe and potentially dangerous situations, reporting “not only raises problems and criticizes mistakes made by those involved, but also addresses successes and shows solutions”.