Between Information and Accusation: Anatomy of Crisis Journalism in the Case of St. Pantelimon Hospital in Bucharest
DOI :
https://doi.org/10.46841/RCV.2026.02.03Mots-clés :
crisis journalism, media framing, health and justice, responsibility and guilt, professional stigmatisation, Romanian press, institutional trustRésumé
Crises in the healthcare system that take on a criminal dimension generate intense media attention and can have significant effects on public trust, the professions involved, and institutional legitimacy. The article analyses how the Romanian press constructed the discourse around the case of the St. Pantelimon Emergency Clinical Hospital in Bucharest, a case of high public visibility, at the intersection of health, justice and public morality. The research is based on a qualitative content analysis of 60 online press articles, examining headlines and leads (the first 2–3 sentences) as the main units for establishing the interpretative framework. The analysis is guided by the framing typology proposed by Semetko and Valkenburg, operationalised by identifying explicit linguistic markers associated with generic frames.
The results indicate a clear predominance of the attribution of responsibility frame, often overlaid with moral evaluations and elements of dramatization, while frames oriented towards the systemic and institutional context remain marginal. Media reporting repeatedly relies on official sources and definitions provided by judicial authorities, contributing to the judicialization of public discourse and the simplification of the complexity of medical practice in intensive care units. The article discusses these findings in relation to the literature on crisis journalism, the mediatisation of justice and professional stigmatisation, highlighting the implications for journalistic ethics, public trust and the symbolic vulnerability of the medical professions. The study contributes to understanding how the media participates in constructing the social reality of medical crises in Romania.
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