PEJ: 2010 saw less coverage of health care
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism, Health policy
Every year, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism breaks down news coverage by topic and medium, then determines what percentage of the news hole each topic filled in a given calendar year (more on methodology here). Spurred by politics-oriented reform coverage and the H1N1 pandemic, health had dominated the news in late 2009 and early 2010, but by year’s end it had fallen behind the economy (14 percent), the mid-term elections (10 percent) and the BP oil spill (7 percent).
Interestingly, it seems that as the supply dropped, public demand for health coverage was actually surging. April’s health care debate ranked behind only the BP oil spill in Pew’s list of events for which public interest exceeded media coverage. Health was also one of many subjects which ranked in the top five in blogs and traditional media, but couldn’t even crack the top 10 on Twitter. For the record, Twitter’s four favorite topics were Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook, in that order.
Pew: Health care coverage still tops news
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has found that health care coverage filled more available news space than any other topic (PDF) for a third straight week.
Health coverage is down from the high of 25 percent it reached two weeks ago and the 19 percent it registered last week, but at 16 percent it still attracted more attention than the economy (which hit 15 percent). Health coverage numbers were again buttressed by heavy exposure on cable news (37 percent) and talk radio (33 percent), with debate in those outlets revolving around acrimonious town hall meetings.
Health policy news is just 1 percent of all news
A study from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that news about health and health care made up 3.6 percent of all news content from January 2007 through June 2008.
It found that 42 percent of stories were about specific diseases or conditions, with cancer receiving the most attention (10 percent of all health coverage).
Thirty-one percent of health news focused on public health issues, including potential epidemics and contamination of food and drugs.
The smallest category of stories focused on health policy or the health care system (27 percent) of all health news, or less than one percent of all news content. This category includes stories on topics such as Medicare and Medicaid, the uninsured, health care costs, and proposals for reform of the health care system.
For the study, 3,513 health stories were analyzed from 48 news outlets, including newspapers of all sizes, network newscasts, cable programmingand online news sites.
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