Health Journalists Utilize Audience, Other Media To Build News Agenda, Researchers Find

Approximately one-fifth of Americans follow health news very closely, according to the Pew Research Center. To identify how the demand for health stories is met, University of Missouri researchers surveyed national health journalists about their development of story ideas and use of expert sources and public relations materials. The researchers found that health journalists determine what information is newsworthy by examining the work of their peers and the issues raised by their colleagues and audiences.


“What does this mean for health news consumers? It means that health journalists work together to filter information and select what they believe is most important for their audiences,” says Maria Len-Rios, assistant professor in the Missouri School of Journalism. “They try to provide readers with accurate information and evaluate sources so that there isn’t undue influence by those who have vested interests in the information. This is the value that health journalists add to their news that may not be present in information from non-journalistic sources.”


Len-Rios and Amanda Hinnant, assistant professor in the Missouri School of Journalism, and other MU researchers surveyed 774 health journalists. They found that health journalists used non-public relations resources (other news media, self-interests, news audiences) more frequently than medical journals or public relations sources.


“Health journalists utilize other media, news audiences and their personal interests as resources for story ideas,” Len-Rios says. “When journalists do use public relations sources, they are likely to rely on universities, nonprofits or government sources that are less likely to appear to have profit-based interests. The fact that journalists aren’t looking to medical journals for health stories ideas – perhaps the source that contains the most detailed information – suggests a greater need to look to these primary sources.”


According to the survey, journalists who used public relations sources more for story ideas tended to believe they should get information to the public quickly and advocate for their readers to improve their health. Conversely, other journalists view themselves as watchdogs of institutions and are wary of public relations sources, Len-Rios says.


“The reliance on other media for story ideas is worth more exploration because it brings up questions of content diversity,” Hinnant says. “How many stories are not making it into the intermedia agenda and for what reasons?”


The study, “Health News Agenda Building: Journalists’ Perceptions of the Role of Public Relations,” was published recently in the summer 2009 issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. The research was funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health, Missouri Health Literacy Enhancement Priority Area Grant.

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Majority In Poll Say Bloggers Important To Journalism

A majority of Americans (55%) in an online survey say bloggers are important to the future of American journalism and 74% say citizen journalism will play a vital role, according to a new poll.

Most respondents (53%) also say the rise of free Internet-based media pose the greatest opportunity to the future of professional journalism and three in four (76%) say the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.

The results are based on a recent We Media -- Zogby Interactive poll.

The We Media survey results were released by iFOCOS and pollster John Zogby as part of an iFOCOS conference on media innovation hosted by theSchool of Communication at the University of Miami, with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the national survey of adults, 72% say they were dissatisfied with the quality of American journalism today. A majority of conference-goers who were polled on the subject agreed -- 55% say they were dissatisfied,and 61% say they believed traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.

Nearly nine out of 10 media insiders (86%) say they believe bloggers will play an important part in journalism's future.

"We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us -- the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media," says Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS, the organization that conducts the annual We Media conference. "We've arrivedat a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society."

Peskin says that, until recently, many traditional news enterpriseshave been skeptical about We Media. "They were either fearful or dismissive of our 2003 research forecasting and documenting the change in the media ecosystem," he says. "Now the Zogby poll provides additional evidence that 'We Media' is an essential component -- perhaps the essential component --for the agenda for news and information into the future."

"The research documents the widespread recognition that control and influence on how we know what we know is shifting to a vastly moredistributed network of empowered individuals and organizations," says Andrew Nachison, co- founder of iFOCOS. "This obviously will have a big impact on how media organizations evolve and conduct business, but it's really about how we all discover, create, share and apply information, and that's important to all industries, to entrepreneurs, to non-profits, to governments, to individuals and to society as a whole. We are all part of the ecosystem."

The Zogby Interactive survey of 5,384 adults nationwide was conducted Jan. 30 - Feb. 1, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.4 percentage points. The Zogby Interactive survey of 77 members of the media who attended the Miami conference carries a margin of error of +/- 11.4 percentage points. While periodic audits show the results from Zogbytelephone and Internet surveys closely track each other, a companion telephone survey of this topic was not conducted.

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National Press Club Defends Subpoenaed Reporters

The National Press Club announced its opposition to the U.S. Army's subpoenas of Oakland, Calif., freelance journalist Sarah Olson and Honolulu Star Bulletin reporter Gregg Kakesako.

The subpoenas call for the reporters to testify at the Feb. 5 court martial of Army Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq and made several disparaging remarks about the conduct of the war. A petition calling for the dismissal of the subpoena has been posted online.

"The National Press Club vehemently opposes any effort to subpoena reporters over their work," says NPC President Jerry Zremski, Washington bureau chief for The Buffalo News. "Subpoenaing reporters in an effort to make the prosecution's case -- particularly when the charge involves free speech issues -- is abhorrent and grossly perverts the foundation of press freedom this nation is built on."

The National Press Club, founded in 1908, has more than 3,700 members in Washington, D.C., and worldwide. Widely known for its Speaker Luncheon Series, televised by C-SPAN, and its public forums for visiting heads of state, the NPC also is Washington's most frequently used venue for news conferences. The NPC conducts an aggressive program of professional education for journalists, funds scholarships for journalism students ofcolor, and operates the nation's only non-academic research library for journalists. Advocacy of a free press is one of the club's central missions.


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