Media Comment in Health News Coverage: Covid-19 Pandemic Case

In light of the function of news in reflection of politics and practice relevant to health and with the aim of the analyses of health news coverage this article deals with a comparison of media valuations in Corona news of Iranian and German television programs. 

The study is descriptive with content analyses of newscasts. The sample comprises 62 news broadcasts of four networks that were chosen non randomly from two Iranian (Networks One and Two) and two German channels (ARD and ZDF). After the choice of dimensions and themes of the health news a code sheet was created by which 749 news related to health, mainly to Corona, and aired from February 18th to March 22nd, 2020 were encoded and analyzed (with SPSS).

Almost a third of all health news on Iran's Networks One and Two (32.9% and 28.4%, respectively) featured ratings with no clear distinction from actual news content. The two German broadcasters generally concentrated on the hard facts and largely adhered to the separation rule between news and commentary.For news about health-related human and material capacities and shortages, the rate of positive ratings in Iranian networks was higher than for all health news (Network One 13.3% vs. 10.7% and Network Two 22.8% vs.11.5%).The main feature of political news related to health is the high proportion of negative ratings in Iranian channels and on ZDF.

To build confidence in the news, the separation between messages and comments can play an appropriate role.