Fig. 3: Scientific quality of news media articles by news outlet and country of publication.
From: News media coverage of COVID-19 public health and policy information

Scores for six scientific quality questions (SI Coding Tool) are shown (mean, 95% confidence interval) for articles (n = 1331) communicating COVID-19 public health or policy information (Fig. 2): (A) applicability, (B) opinion versus facts, (C) validity, (D) precision, (E) context, and (F) global assessment (i.e., an overall assessment of the article’s scientific quality). Each question was evaluated on a scale from 1 to 5 (5 corresponding to highest scientific quality). Sampled articles were published between 1 March and 15 August 2020 (Methods). Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance and post-hoc multi-comparison test statistics are in SI Table S3.