cqvip:Zika is an infectious disease that emerged as an epidemic in Latin America in 2015 and arrived in Ecuador at the start of 2016.This research analyzes the coverage that two national Ecuadorian newspapers gave to this sanitary emergency.Journals El Telégrafo and El Universo,the first one of government domain and the other one of a private company,were chosen to be studied,and interviews with journalists who reported before,during and after the epidemic,were conducted.The results showed that:In most news articles,a single source is handled,preferably the official or institutional one;that the majority of articles were about the international situation rather than local or national information;that alarm content is privileged over the preventive;and finally that the earthquake that hit the Ecuadorian coast in April 2016 weakened the coverage of Zika,even though the epidemic was at its outbreak at the time in the country.There is a need for journalists to be trained to cover these types of emergencies in order to better inform the people and follow up diseases cycles in order to arrange their own news agenda and work more on solution approaches.
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