Abstract
To understand newspapers’ Covid-19 portrayal in the Philippines and contribute to COVID-19 media framing literature, this study identified news frames in 97 banner stories of three Philippine broadsheets and determined how major frames depicted COVID-19 during its initial spread in the country (January 30 - March 25, 2020). Utilizing deductive and inductive approaches to generate news frames for coding, results yielded 12 frames in the three newspapers, with Action, New Evidence, Reassurance, Conflict, Economic Consequence, and Social Consequence as major frames. Generally, the newspapers’ pandemic depiction was similar in foregrounding government response and new COVID-19 information instead of news that invites fear and panic. Variations were found in the newspapers’ individual focus on the pandemic, conflicts about it, and its economic effects – nuances which reflected the newspapers’ reputation. Results identify the need for developing people’s critical media and information literacy skills. Studying COVID-19 news framing in developing these skills is recommended.
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