Constructive coverage of pandemic By Chang Yueh-han 張約翰 With local media providing blanket coverage of the spread of local COVID-19 cases, it has become virtually impossible to avoid news about the outbreak. With the entire nation under a level 3 alert, it is worth asking how media outlets can best assist with this national effort. How much of the news output around COVID-19 is genuinely informative, fact-based reporting? The term “news avoidance” has in the past few years entered the lexicon of journalism studies to describe people who consume almost no news in their daily lives. Studies show that the number of people who consciously avoid the news is increasing every year, exacerbating the already serious blow to the news and media industry caused by social media and search engines and posing a threat to the healthy functioning of democracies.