A study from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at how the U.S. news media covered health issues for the first six months of this year. The study finds that news about health and health care made up about five percent of all news content from the first half of 2009.
Other key findings:
- Health policy and the state of the U.S. health care system was the most covered health-related topic: 40 percent of all health news coverage in the first half of the year. The bulk of that coverage was in June, when health legislation started making its way through Congress.
- After health policy/the health care system (40 percent), public health (36 percent) was the second most covered topic, dominated by news of the swine flu outbreak.
- About a quarter of health news focused on specific diseases or conditions. This reflects a substantial shift in the nature of health coverage from the previous study, when news concerning specific diseases dominated coverage of health with roughly 42 percent, followed by public health at 31 percent and finally health policy and the U.S. health care system at 27 percent.
Latest numbers
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s weekly News Coverage Index reveals that July 20-26, 25 percent of media coverage was related to health care and debate over reform. It’s the highest share for health care since the project started keeping track of the numbers in 2007, more than doubling the previous peak for health care coverage, which was earlier this month. The next most heavily covered issues were the Henry Louis Gates arrest and the economic crisis.
Health coverage was heaviest on cable television (38 percent) and radio (35 percent), while online and newspaper coverage both came in below 20 percent. All those numbers are a far cry from 2007 and 2008, when a single percentage point of coverage was above average.
The News Coverage Index, released weekly by the PEJ, consists of 55 outlets and about 1,300 stories each week.
