Perpetuating Health Disparities of Minority Groups: The Role of U.S. Newspapers in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, news media are expected to play a critical role in reducing health disparities. However, we know little about whether and how disparities in COVID-19 have been covered in national and local U.S. newspapers. This study examined whether minority health gained news attention and whether partisan bias affected related coverage in the early stages of the pandemic. Results indicate that minority groups have been underrepresented in COVID-19 news articles. Left-leaning newspapers were more likely to discuss minorities in COVID-19 news than least biased media. Left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers did not differ in the number of articles mentioning racial/ethnic minorities. COVID-19 news exceeded the average U.S. reading comprehension level and require some college education to understand but did not differ in readability levels among partisan newspapers. Left-leaning newspapers used significantly more medical terms and affiliated scientific facts to describe COVID-19 than right-leaning newspapers. Implications include avoiding potential failures in informing the public (especially the racial/ethnic minorities) essential scientific facts about disease prevention and increasing public trust in health news coverage.

Beyond Mortality: The Social and Health Impacts of COVID-19 among Older (55+) BIPOC and LGBT Respondents in a Canada-Wide Survey

“…These results support other findings that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the magnitude of pre-existing disparities in access to health care for minority groups [40]. The pandemic also manifested new stigmatization opportunities that may have impacted access to healthcare for BIPOC respondents, potentially resulting from the increase in the anti-Asian sentiment [41] or the media's framing of COVID-19 transmission in racialized communities [42]. Our finding ties into the social determinants of health model where access to health services is a social determinant [43] with the pandemic exacerbating these pre-existing differences.…”

Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in COVID-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020

“…One study found that national online newspaper outlets (January to March 2020) most commonly emphasized the financial impact of , stories of individuals affected by COVID-19 (7.0%), COVID-19 death and death rates (6.8%), precautionary recommendations for the public (6.2%), and quarantine (5.9%) (Basch et al, 2020). However, racial minorities were underrepresented in COVID-19 news articles (January 21 through June, 2020) (Xu et al, 2022). Another study revealed that the coverage of African American issues (between March and May 15, 2020) by Black websites and mainstream news outlets were very similar to each other, including emphasizing societal over individual causes of racial disparities in health outcomes (Biswas et al, 2021).…”