Media Framing and Political Advertising in the Patients' Bill of Rights Debate

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of interest groups over news content. In particular, I explore the possibility that political advertising campaigns affect the tenor and framing of newspaper coverage in health policy debates. To do so, I compare newspaper coverage of the Patients' Bill of Rights debate in 1999 in five states that were subject to extensive advertising campaigns with coverage in five comparison states that were not directly exposed to the advocacy campaigns. I find significant differences in coverage depending on the presence or absence of paid advertising campaigns, and conclude that readers were exposed to different perspectives and arguments about managed care regulation if the newspapers they read were published in states targeted by political advertisements. Specifically, newspaper coverage was 17 percent less likely to be supportive of managed care reform in states subject to advertising campaigns designed to foment opposition to the Patients' Bill of Rights. Understanding the ability of organized interests and political actors to successfully promote their preferred issue frames in a dynamic political environment is particularly important in light of the proliferation of interest groups, the prevalence of multimillion-dollar political advertising campaigns, and the health care reform debate under President Barack Obama.

Political Science and U.S. Health Policy in the Era of the Affordable Care Act

“…Finally, recent research has also shown that framing might work through both direct and indirect pathways to shape individuals' opinions on issues. Analyzing the campaign for the Patients' Bill of Rights in the late 1990s, Rabinowitz () looks at the effects of advertising placed by groups in opposition to strengthening patient protections. Targeting crucial states, entities like the American Association of Health Plans aired millions of dollars of advertising.…”

“…They did so not necessarily by altering perceptions of the general public directly, but instead by successfully shaping newspaper coverage in their favor. Importantly, Rabinowitz () finds that news reports mirrored the talking point presented in advertising in opposition to the Patients' Bill of Rights.…”

Progressive and Conservative “Freedom” Through the Lens of FOX and MSNBC

“…Scholars such as Altheide (1996Altheide ( , 1997 have studied how the framing process is related to communication format (organization, timing, and style of a program), themes (parts of the storytelling process that are recognizable to an audience), discourse (a way of discussing an issue), and frames (a boundary for discussing an issue or event). More recently framing has been used by scholars to specifically examine how the media shapes political discourse on a number of issues including the Iraq War (Aday, 2010;Aday, Livingston, & Hebert, 2005;Altheide & Grimes, 2005;Harmon & Muenchen, 2009;Schwalbe, Silcock, & Keith, 2008), Hurricane Katrina (Lynch, 2007;Melican, 2007), the Patients' Bill of Rights (Rabinowitz, 2010), Abu Ghraib Prison (Del Rosso, 2011), the Great Recession (Peck, 2014), and gun control (Callaghan & Schnell, 2001).…”

Print media coverage of primary healthcare and related research evidence in South Africa

“…One of the major potential influences on policymaking and decision making, more generally, is the media coverage of issues and events [ 22 – 24 ]. The news media is located at the interface between public and policy agendas, and plays a major role in setting policy agendas [ 25 ] as well as providing a window into issues concerning the general population [ 26 , 27 ] and helping influence policy agendas by focusing public attention on particular issues at the expense of others [ 26 – 29 ].…”