What makes African American health disparities newsworthy? An experiment among journalists about story framing

Abstract

News stories reporting race-specific health information commonly emphasize disparities between racial groups. But recent research suggests this focus on disparities has unintended effects on African American audiences, generating negative emotions and less interest in preventive behaviors (Nicholson RA, Kreuter MW, Lapka C et al. Unintended effects of emphasizing disparities in cancer communication to African-Americans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008; 17: 2946-52). They found that black adults are more interested in cancer screening after reading about the progress African Americans have made in fighting cancer than after reading stories emphasizing disparities between blacks and whites. This study builds on past findings by (i) examining how health journalists judge the newsworthiness of stories that report race-specific health information by emphasizing disparities versus progress and (ii) determining whether these judgments can be changed by informing journalists of audience reactions to disparity versus progress framing. In a double-blind-randomized experiment, 175 health journalists read either a disparity- or progress-framed story on colon cancer, preceded by either an inoculation about audience effects of such framing or an unrelated (i.e. control) information stimuli. Journalists rated the disparity-frame story more favorably than the progress-frame story in every category of news values. However, the inoculation significantly increased positive reactions to the progress-frame story. Informing journalists of audience reactions to race-specific health information could influence how health news stories are framed.

Gain versus loss‐framed messaging and colorectal cancer screening among African Americans: A preliminary examination of perceived racism and culturally targeted dual messaging

“…Gain and loss-framed messaging might differentially activate thoughts about racism among African Americans, and varied activations of perceived racism could underlie differential effects of health messaging. To date, however, studies have not well considered links between message framing and racism, including whether inadvertent activations of perceived racism stem from and attenuate the effectiveness of negatively valenced (i.e., loss-framed) screening messages (though see Hinnant, Oh, Caburnay, & Kreuter, 2011;Nicholson et al, 2008;Penner et al, 2012;Shariff-Marco, Klassen, & Bowie, 2010).…”

Communication About Health Disparities in the Mass Media

“…Empirical studies of health disparities indeed suggest that structural factors, including news values and journalistic practices, play a role in shaping the extent to which disparities appear in the news media and how they are framed (e.g., Gandy, Kopp, Hands, Frazer, & Phillips, 1997;Hinnant, Oh, Caburnay, & Kreuter, 2011). Qualitative studies indicate that journalists view health disparities as an important but challenging topic (Gasher et al, 2007;Wallington, Blake, Taylor-Clark, & Viswanath, 2010).…”

Influences on the Construction of Health News: The Reporting Practices of Local Television News Health Journalists

“…Although studies have evaluated the health content provided by news media (Kim & Willis, 2007;Pribble et al, 2006;Tanner & Friedman, 2011;Tanner, Thrasher, & Blake, 2012;Wang & Gantz, 2010) and explored how health news is reported across media (Hinnant, Len-Rios, & Oh, 2012;Hinnant, Oh, Caburnay, & Kreuter, 2011;Len-Rios et al, 2009;Tanner, 2004;Viswanath et al, 2008), less is known about the health reporting practices of local television news journalists. Although scholars agree that social and institutional pressures inside and outside of a news organization influence the news media and their content decisions (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996), these pressures are often more prevalent in the reporting of health and medical news, due, in part, to the technical nature of the content and reporters' lack of medical expertise (Corbett & Mori, 1999;Tanner, 2004;Viswanath et al, 2008).…”