Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ESTUDOS EM COMUNICAÇÃO, sa.32, ss.137-160, 2021 (Scopus)
The COVID-19 pandemic characterizes a pro-cess that is capable of reorganizing moderninstitutions with an unprecedented impact inhistory. In this process, people’s access toaccurate information gains prominence. Thenegative correlation between the increasingvolume of information in social media andaccess to accurate information may canalizepeople back to traditional media. Would it becorrect to say that the news produced in tradi-tional media (particularly in TV broadcasting)does not contain disinformation? This arti-cle examines the disinformation in TV newsby analysing the news texts about the Coron-avirus in the main news bulletins starting fromthe week when the first case was diagnosed.This paper, which tries to understand how COVID-19 was projected to the society in theearly days and thereafter how the society wascanalized against the global crisis, analyses athow political power is represented, framed,and how news discourse is constructed inCOVID-19 news. The two most-watched newsbulletins in Turkey throughout March and Au-gust in 2020 (ATV and FOX TV) were exam-ined using descriptive analysis. In the anal-ysis, it was found that the news discourses,which are polarized as pro-government andopposition, are projected in a context thatpraises or criticizes political power. In thestudy, it was concluded that the causalities andconsequences of the crisis are decontextual-ized by instrumentalizing and/or tabloidizing.