Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

305 pandemic, scientists learned how to communicate”, says Camila Figueroa. “Scientists have become much more open towards talking to journalists who may not necessarily be part of their fields; they have realized how important communication is”, Daniel Silva highlights. One strategy was building narratives that contributed to public trust in science. “Writing about genetics or the structure of the coronavirus is very different. But if you put a face to the Oxford vaccine volunteers who were part of phase 3 of the clinical studies, it is very important for building trust in vaccines”. For example (Figueroa, 2020), featuring on the front page the first healthcare worker receiving their first dose of the vaccine (LUN, December 25 th , 2020) or a close-up of an elderly man smiling on LUN’s front page under the headline “Full of Life” (February 4 th , 2021). “Putting a face to vaccination”, Figueroa emphasizes, “brings science closer to people.” By May 2020, data, figures and infection and death curves were not enough to sensitize and humanize the crisis. Some media outlets dedicated their covers to those who had died until then by printing lists with full names ( The New York Times and O’Globo , for instance) or their portraits (Sábado magazine from El Mercurio ). In the effort to humanize and tell the real-life stories of the virus, journalism also deployed reporting strategies and narratives where the reporter was also the one telling and starring in the story in first person, as a way to connecting to their audiences: whether it was volunteering in vaccine studies (Greco, 2021) or their testimony as a hospitalized patient in a critical unit due to Covid-19 complications (Salaberry, 2021). The effort to find the human side of the news that triggers empathy in audiences, the rush to be first but not necessarily better or more accurate and analyze more intimate and painful moments and places of the characters in news stories (like hospitals, private homes or funerals) implies challenges from an ethical perspective of journalistic practices. How much emotion, music and post-production features are necessary in a broadcasting report about the pandemic or whether false expectations will be generated from a study in its early stages of animal testing are some of the fundamental ethical questions that journalists must ask themselves before publishing. “A cure is always found for something that has no cure”, says Francisco Aravena. “It suffices to think for a second before speaking or writing or publishing.” In a digital ecosystem that thrives on who has more traffic, there is a risk that “editors seek more clicks on the internet or higher ratings and then somehow a cure for something appears or an asteroid will graze Earth ; content that plays on the edge”, explains Daniel Silva. Harassing patient zero can have concrete impacts on their private life and