Visual displays in the news media become critical during escalating events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as they facilitate the communication of complex information to the public. This article investigates the use of graphs in Korea’s news media during the COVID-19 outbreak. We selected 12 dates that represent turning points in the outbreak of the disease and collected news stories including graphs from seven Korean daily newspapers issued on those dates. First, we analyzed the usage of graphs in COVID-19 news stories. Quantitative analysis of the types and frequency of graphs used in COVID-19 news stories and qualitative analysis of the content of news stories containing graphs were conducted. Second, we identified cases in which readers may be biased by the mathematical misuse of graphs in the news stories covering COVID-19. The implications of these findings for future teaching and learning of graph literacy in school mathematics courses are discussed.

在 COVID-19 大流行等不断升级的事件中，新闻媒体中的视觉展示变得至关重要，因为它们有助于向公众传达复杂的信息。本文调查了 COVID-19 爆发期间韩国新闻媒体中图表的使用情况。我们选择了代表疾病爆发转折点的 12 个日期，并收集了新闻报道，包括在这些日期发行的 7 家韩国日报的图表。首先，我们分析了 COVID-19 新闻报道中图表的使用情况。对 COVID-19 新闻报道中使用的图表的类型和频率进行了定量分析，并对包含图表的新闻报道的内容进行了定性分析。其次，我们确定了读者可能会因 COVID-19 新闻报道中对图表的数学滥用而产生偏见的案例。