Resources aren’t everything, but they do help: assessing local TV health news to deliver substantive and useful health information

ABSTRACT

Background This study explores how different station characteristics, especially organizational resources, influence local health news reporting. While some studies have identified general trends in nationwide local health news, no research has closely examined the impact of organizational gatekeeping factors of health news coverage by comparing two local television stations in the same market.

Method Researchers used a comparative content analysis to evaluate local TV health news stories (N = 416) from two local television stations from the same market. Informed by gatekeeping theory, several characteristics of health news stories from stations with different organizational resources were analyzed including: length of coverage, location and quantity of stories, health topics, and target health population.

Results A series of chi-square analyses indicate that there is a direct correlation between a station’s organizational resources and the length (Cramer’s V = .517), location (V = .369), health topics (V = .410), number, and quality of news sources (V = .424), target health population (V = .173), use of interviews (V = .685), and presence of conflict (V = .262) in local TV health newscasts.

Conclusion Organizational resources (e.g. station budget) appear to be strongly related to the two stations’ health news coverage. The station with greater organizational resources provided more developed and localized content with longer, interview-based, conflict-driven, and targeted information geared toward to the public. For health communication researchers, information providers, and health policy-makers, the findings can help enhance their ability to better customize the planning and placement of their local health communication campaigns and outreach efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Health communication
• health policy
• health disparities
• public health
• Gatekeeping Theory
• mass media communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in this study.

Notes on contributors

YoungAh Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Graduate Studies Director, Ball State University. YoungAh Lee is the director of the public relations master’s program at Ball State University. Her research focuses on investigating the impact of strategic communication with an emphasis on health communication and social media.

Sun-A Park, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Robert Morris University. Sun-A’s research interests include environmental risk, health, and crisis communication, such as consumer health crisis management, public health crisis communication, and corporate sustainability communication.

Hyunmin Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Drexel University. Min’s research focuses on social media strategies for relationship and reputation management in PR, as well as examining media messages of public health issues.

Erin Willis, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Colorado – Boulder. Erin studies how user-generated information persuades peers to manage their chronic disease and change health behaviors.

Glen T. Cameron, Ph.D., Professor, Missouri School of Journalism. He is a professor and the Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research at the Missouri School of Journalism. He also is founder and co-director of the Health Communication Research Center at the University of Missouri. Cameron has a joint appointment in Family and Community Medicine to study patient-centered outcomes research.

ORCID

Erin Willis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1582-0867