News coverage of public health issues: The role of news sources and the processes of news construction

Abstract

This chapter examined the use of news sources in New York Times` coverage of West Nile virus and avian flu through a quantitative content analysis. Our findings indicate that government and scientists were the most prominent sources in the coverage of West Nile virus, with the World Health Organization taking over as the second most prominent source in avian flu coverage. These results suggest that source selection reflected not only intrinsic differences between diseases but also the influence of journalistic values and norms. This study went a step further to link source use with the amount of attention media paid to these diseases. Our findings show that stories at the phase of increased attention utilize more varied sources and that most stories use more than one source of information in the coverage of epidemic hazards. In addition, source prevalence, including both presence and dominance, did not vary a lot at different stages of media attention. Implications are discussed. © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.