Health Content in Local Television News: A Current Appraisal

Abstract

While local television news remains an important channel for the dissemination of health information, there has been little systematic examination of health content on those newscasts. This study, designed to update and expand upon earlier efforts, examined 1,382.5 hours of newscasts that aired on seven channels in four markets between December 2004 and June 2005. The four markets were a major-, a large-, a medium-, and a small-size market in the Midwestern United States. In total, 40,112 news stories were coded. About 8.1% of the news stories were devoted to health content. Health stories covered a large array of topics. Physical illnesses/diseases and healthy living issues received the most frequent coverage, while mental health and aging-related content were covered least frequently. Most health stories were neutral in tone and rather brief, with an average duration of less than 1 minute. One in eight (12.4%) health stories provided follow-up options. This is primarily due to an increase in the number of health news stories presented with a website URL compared to previous findings. Market differences emerged, although, interestingly, stations in the larger markets were not the leaders in health coverage.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Supported by a NCI research grant (RO1 CA108487-01). An earlier version of this article was presented to the Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association annual meeting, San Francisco, 2007.

Notes

¹Verbal and visual tones were coded separately. Verbal tone was coded as (1) positive if it clearly pointed to success, reduced incidence and mortality rates, reduced health care costs, or positive psychological states (e.g., courage); (2) negative, if it focused on difficulty associated with handling medications or surviving diseases, increased incidence and mortality rates, the costliness of health care, or negative psychological states (e.g., hopeless); (3) mixed, if it was evenly or almost evenly split with positive and negative tones; or (4) neutral, if it only introduced facts and figures, incidence rates, and expressed no negative or positive comments about them. Visual tone was coded in much the same way: (1) generally positive, if it presented a clearly positive situation, mood, or subject; (2) generally negative, if it presented a clearly negative situation, mood, or subject; (3) mixed; or (4) neutral, if it did not present any clearly negative or positive feelings, or if it showed peaceful and tranquil scenes.