O jornalismo especializado em saúde durante a pandemia da Covid-19

: o caso da Agência Lusa

Abstract

In 2020, the world was overwhelmed by the arrival of the new coronavirus. Information about the virus has come through various means and sources, making it relatively easy to spread false news, requiring specialized journalism that is capable of reporting correctly.This internship report intends to analyze how the media, more precisely specialized health journalism, with the main focus on the Lusa agency, acted during the first months of the covid-19 pandemic in Portugal.The starting question: “How did health specialized journalism act during the covid-19 pandemic?”, and its research questions “How did Lusa produce news about covid-19?”, “How was the reception by doctors about journalism about covid-19? ” and “What is the importance of specialized health journalism?”.To reach the intended objective, we opted to use a qualitative methodology, more specifically interviews with five journalists from Lusa and five doctors from different specialties, in order to compare positions and identify trends.The results demonstrate that the opinion among doctors varies and not everyone is sure that the communication made was the best, having been described as sensationalist and speculative. On the other hand, journalists emphasised that they were more alert and that they followed the rules for verifying information and crossing sources, always complying with the deontological code.It was found that specialized information is very important at all times, but especially in times of urgency such as those of a pandemic.Since it is still a very recent topic, not only in Portugal but also in the world, this research aims to emphasize the importance of specialized journalism and contribute to a more rigorous and clear communication by the media.Keywords: media, specialized journalism, healthy journalism, disinformation, fake news, covid-19

Date of Award	15 Apr 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Eduardo Cintra Torres (Supervisor)