Media and Issues

Public interest in natural disasters, sports and political scandals in the United States (US) has fallen in the last two decades, the first quite precipitously, a Pew Research Centre survey has found. Three categories of news shifted downwards, and two of those changes could conceivably be regarded as symbolic of greater seriousness. Interest in natural disasters fell precipitously from an index...

Though the role of anti-tobacco advertising in reducing youth smoking has been fairly well established in recent years, a new study indicates that newspaper editorial coverage also may have a significant indirect impact. The study evaluates the relationship between newspaper coverage of the Florida Tobacco Control Program's (FTCP) health promotion campaign with declines in youth smoking reported...

(July 13, 2007) Meeting at an Internews Europe workshop for editors last month, over 40 media leaders from across Vietnam agreed to work together to reduce stigma and discrimination in HIV reporting. They also agreed to promote more frequent and responsible coverage of HIV/AIDS by their journalists. “Media play a pivotal role in HIV/AIDS prevention in our country,” said Vietnamese Deputy Minister...

A revolution of sorts is under way in Latin America with Uruguay holding the torchlight for the concept of democratic, community media. A draft community media law that says television and radio frequencies in Uruguay should be equitably distributed has already won overwhelming support in the House of Representatives. On June 5, 2007, the Uruguayan Congress (Cámara de Representantes) approved by...

Despite experts and health organizations refuting the theory of a connection between vaccines and autism, recent events have brought the debate front and center in the news once again. But are the media actually doing a disservice to the public by continuing to bring up vaccines when discussing autism? "Do I think they've done a disservice? Yes," said Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine...

Most major news outlets are unwilling to let the public see how their editorial process works, a new study has concluded. Fewer than half of the websites surveyed publicly corrected mistakes in their stories and only a handful shared with readers the journalistic and ethical standards that theoretically guide their newsrooms. 'Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media...

Back in March 2004, Mukesh Kapila, the top U.N. official in Sudan at the time, grabbed the media limelight for Darfur by appearing on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme and describing the conflict as "ethnic cleansing" and "the world's greatest humanitarian crisis". He compared the killing that began in Sudan's western region in early 2003 to Rwanda, and asked why the world wasn't doing more. His...

Online publishers are strapping on their Birkenstocks. Buoyed by the breakaway success of An Inconvenient Truth, the film documentary of Al Gore’s environmental lecture, publishers like The Washington Post, National Geographic and others are increasing their offerings of ‘green’ content, hoping to attract readers and advertising revenues from manufacturers and retailers who are suddenly walking...

Dream journals being kept by students in a college psychology class have provided researchers with a unique look at how people experienced the events of 9/11, including the influence that television coverage of the World Trade Centre attacks had on people’s levels of stress. Reported in the April 2007 issue of journal Psychological Science, the study data foud that for every hour of television...

NEW YORK: For several years now, the Chicago Tribune has published numerous articles -- many of them award-winning -- exposing the many faults in the administration of capital punishment in its home state and the nation. Some of them helped inspire a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. All the while, the paper's editorial page continued to support capital punishment. That changed three...