ABSTRACT
Since March 11, 2020, COVID-19 has been declared as a global pandemic. The case of the COVID-19 has become the major topic of the media around the world because it didn’t only threaten human life, it also gave negative impacts on various sectors. Many kinds of news about COVID-19, which its context started from information about the disease until it is been associated with politics and economics, have been published every day, especially in this globalization era, where information can be instantly accessed. The news about COVID-19 became overflow, at the point, various interests lead media for not being objective. While generating the news, journalists are expected to make the news objectively as it is the most important condition in journalism. Objectivity aims at presenting the real situation of some reporting events based on fact, relevance, and neutrality, which became the main factors of objective news. At the same time, it is been known that media have the power to construct social reality depending on how they created the news. This research used quantitative content analysis and was conducted in six phases from January 30th until March 15, 2020. The purpose of this research was to explain the comparative objectivity of two main online news in Indonesia (namely, detik.com and kompas.com.) on reporting COVID-19.
Keywords: COVID-19; Comparative study; Online News Content; Westerstahl Objectivity