ABSTRACT
The study examines journalists’ knowledge, perception and attitude towards the coverage of COVID-19 pandemic in Delta sate, Nigeria. The study aims to ascertain the level of knowledge of COVID-19 pandemic among journalists in Delta state. It aims to determine the perception of Delta state journalists towards the coverage of COVID-19 pandemic and evaluate the attitude of Delta state journalists towards the coverage COVID-19 pandemic. The study was anchored on the social judgment theory. A total of 50 respondents were drawn from the population of 201 journalists using the purposive sampling to select four chapels in Asaba and Warri. that was collected with structured questionnaire. The study concluded that journalists in Asaba and Warri have high knowledge on causes of COVID-19 which was related to animal fluid and in Wuhan China and the origin to be linked to Wuhan city of China. Also the journalist claimed to have high level of knowledge towards various symptoms of COVID-19, the importance Of COVID-19 vaccination to the citizens, preventive guideline of Federal government and knowledge of journalists towards the transmission of COVID-19, there is also significant positive perception of journalists towards coverage of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. The research recommended that the level of knowledge about COVID-19 should be increased because of the level of conspiracy theory and false news about the pandemic especially on the cases of vaccine acceptability by the public, journalists should ensure that their figures are accurate so as to increase their perception on positive side and journalists should have a good attitude toward the coverage of COVID-19.
