Abstract
In the summer of 2021, amidst the fourth state of emergency being issued in Tokyo, the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games were held in the capitol city, which was concurrent with the arrival of the fifth wave of coronavirus pandemic. This paper discusses how television reported this inconceivable reality—the international sporting event held every four years and the start of medical collapse coincided in the same country—and the process that led to it. In examining the above, the author employed a quantitative analysis based on the meta data of TV programs and a qualitative analysis of TV viewing during three periods of time: before the event, right after the start of event, and during the infection explosion.
As a result, it was found that TV coverage on COVID-19 was affected by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in various aspects such as the amount of time allocated in news and information programs, journalistic stance, the functions that television is supposed to perform.
