Coverage of health news in regional and national dailies in India

Abstract

It is mass media which transmits most ofthe health promotional strategies to the general public. Mass media plays a crucial role in planning. implementing and evaluating public health care. Coverage of health issues in mass media inform, influence and determine the health seeking behaviour ofan individual. Mass media focus on patterns ofhealth seeking behaviours and also disparities. Though bringing awareness about the health care programmes of the government, media helps to improve health status ofthe country. Health campaigns can use media as an advocacy tool to achieve policy level change. Arguments were also going on about the role ofmass media in promoting public health in the developing country like India. Public health communication is confined to publicity ofgovernment campaigns, inauguration ofprogrammes and donations given by the ministers. Media has failed to give sustainable attention to public health issues which is in decay due to lack of infrastructure. This study has been undertaken inorder to examine the role of media in health reporting. This study tries to compare the coverage of health news in national and regional/language press. This paper tries to find out the amount ofcoverage given to different health news in regional and national newspaper. The Hindu and Prajavan (Kannada) has been taken for the study. Content categories were made and operational definitions have been provided. Newspapers ofone-month period were selected for the study. total 60 issues have been studied. This study has been undertaken inrader to study the amount ofcoverage given to health news by the press, importance given to health issues by national and regional newspapers has been compared.