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.

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:





Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Britney Needs Privacy, Mental Illness Group Says

Pop singer Britney Spears, hospitalized in Los Angeles, for psychiatric treatment, needs privacy, according to a mental illness group.

"A media circus and reckless speculation has surrounded events in the life of pop singer Britney Spears and her family," says Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). "Professional ethics require that mental health professionals who have not examined or treated individuals not presume to diagnose them. A person's treatment and recovery from any illness also is entitled to privacy -- which in fact may be an important factor in recovery."

Spears was hospitalized this week at UCLA after an escort involving multiple police vehicles, including helicopters. Media scrutiny of Britney Spears has been intense this week, with mainstream media giving her story prominent play. Some journalists have been quoting mental health professionals to get their take on Spears' condition.

Spears' hospitalization follows a year of increasingly erratic behavior in which Spears' two young children were removed from her custody.

"In the case of Britney Spears, professional ethics also are involved which the media must confront," NAMI's Fitzpatrick says. "Roy Peter Clark, vice-president of the Poynter Institute, a leading center of journalism training and ethics, recently wrote. 'There is clearly a danger zone, when life and health are at stake, when the best thing the press can do is back off. That time for Spears is probably now.'"

However, the Spears case does offer a chance to discuss mental illness more broadly and just focus on Britney Spears, Fitzpatrick says.

"NAMI believes it is important that such discussions in our homes, offices,
schools, and stores, as well as in the media, be based on facts," he says. "What is needed--for anyone--is understanding and support. We encourage everyone to focus not on Britney Spears, but on all the ordinary people in our own communities who deserve our attention."

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:



Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Public Policy Fails to Address the Effects of Media Violence on Children

Highly publicized events such as school shootings arouse public interest in the effects of media violence exposure on children, yet there is still considerable public debate about whether to take this issue seriously. A recent article in Social Issues and Policy Review summarizes the research on the effects of media violence and convincingly demonstrates the profound influence that media violence is having in society.

The many studies that have been compiled on the effects of viewing media violence show that there are at least 14 scientifically documented effects on children’s physiological and psychological well-being, both in the short and long term. Although many different types of studies have been conducted, they converge on the same conclusion: Violent media exposure increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior. Video games are of special concern because their effects may be particularly pronounced.

Despite the abundant research documenting the harmful effects of media violence, few people seem to get the message. For example, over half of American parents believe that violence makes children more aggressive, yet only a small percentage establish rules regarding content for their households. In addition, little has been done in the public policy arena in the United States. Because of First Amendment concerns, the courts are less concerned tolerant of government restrictions on media violence than on other public health risk factors. Furthermore, some courts have failed to glean the true strength of the scientific evidence from expert testimony by opposing sides.

The authors outline clear policy options. They recommend a moratorium on access-restriction legislation. Instead, they suggest that parents should be more actively involved in their child’s media habits and that creating a universal rating system for all media, in combination with a major education campaign, might be the most effective policy. In addition, they propose that physicians, medical schools, and state and city governments could also undertake policy initiatives that might be effective. Media violence effects “are likely to become greater over time, as different media converge, become more interactive, become more global, and colonize more spaces in our lives,” the authors note.

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:



Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Teaching, Avatar-to-Avatar

Under the guise of his avatar, Aaron Uhrmacher from Text 100 Public Relations Company came to an Ithaca College island on Second Life to present to a class, also in the guise of their avatars. No plane ticket needed to get to this island.

There in a virtual world, students' avatars from Kim Gregson's Qualitative Research class sat in a virtual amphitheatre on the side of a hill while Uhrmacher presented them with real-world information. After the presentation, the students typed in questions and Uhrmacher responded verbally.

Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world that enables its members to play, do business, and otherwise communicate with each other through avatars. Second Life has its own economy, through which members can purchase land and create a virtual island, monitoring who is allowed on the island and what kind of activity can take place there.

"This is a great opportunity for the students; they get to meet people they never would otherwise on a regular basis. They don't just hang out there -- this is education so they need real life experiences, and for a virtual world that is as real as you can get," says Gregson, pointing out that Uhrmacher won the Young PR Professional of the Year Award.

What's the educational result? "They are definitely more engaged with the topic and their papers are better; they seem to do more thinking about different questions and they spend more time on the class," says Gregson.

And that's not all. After class they invest more time blogging about theclass experience. For some there is also a language benefit. "They are talking to people from all over, not just the U.S.," says Gregson, noting that not only is it a diverse experience but also, "I hear things like, 'O.K. I can do this in Spanish' or 'Does anybody speak Italian?'"

Gregson, assistant professor of television-radio in the Roy H. Park School of Communications and a leader in the use of the Internet/alternative media, explains that that these virtual islands in Second Life amount to a server that allows those who purchase space to create a virtual island and monitor who is allowed on that island.

Gregson is currently designing and developing two islands; one island, complete with palm trees, a hill and a building that looks a lot like the college's own Park School the Ithaca College campus; this island allows those who enter, such as Uhrmacher or prospective students, to experience the Park School. The second island will be the Center for Independent Media, which will focus on media outside of the traditional means, such as blogs, podcasts, and Second Life, created by individuals.

Are there more of these virtual presentations to come? "Absolutely," says Gregson, who plans to bring a speaker from Los Angeles and one from North Carolina to the island for her Audience Research class. Beyond that, Gregson is currently working with an experimental film class who will show their work at an experimental film festival on the Ithaca College island.


Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

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.

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Nearly Half of Our Lives Spent With TV, Radio, Internet, Newspapers, According to Census

Adults and teens will spend nearly five months (3,518 hours) next year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to personal music devices. That's only one of thousands of nuggets of information on Americana and the world in the U.S. Census Bureau's "Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007," released today.

"The statistical abstract is a collaborative effort that showcases our government statistics and the work of the international community, private industry and nonprofit agency researchers," says Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon.

According to projections from a communications industry forecast, people will spend 65 days in front of the TV, 41 days listening to radio and a little over a week on the Internet in 2007. Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper and teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music. Consumer spending for media is forecasted to be $936.75 per person.

Other facts from the Census Bureau:

-- Nearly half (47 percent) of college freshmen enrolled in 2005 had earned an average grade of "A" in high school, compared to two in 10 (20 percent) in 1970. The majority (79 percent) of freshmen in 1970 had an important personal objective of "developing a meaningful philosophy of life." By 2005, the majority of freshmen (75 percent) said their primary objective was "being very well off financially."
-- There were 3.5 million U.S. millionaires in 2001, more than a half million of them (572,000) in California and about 3,000 in Vermont.
-- More than half (50.3 percent) of U.S. households -- nearly 57 million -- owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005, representing 91 million individual investors. Equity owners had a median age of 51, a median household income of $65,000 and $125,000 in median household financial assets. (Tables 1194, 1195)
-- There were 278 million debit cards in U.S. hands in 2004, with 22.2 billion transactions amounting to more than $1 trillion. (Table 1168)
-- More than half of families with credit cards (56 percent) "almost always" pay off the balance, 20 percent "sometimes" pay off the balance and another 24 percent "hardly ever" pay off the balance.
-- The average tax refund in 2003 was $2,154, up from $1,802 in 2000. Average taxes due at the time of filing were $3,499 in 2003, down from $4,406 in 2000. (Table 473)
-- The greater Cincinnati airport led major U.S. airports in on-time arrivals in the last three months of 2005 with an 84.3 percent on-time rate. Salt Lake City International had the best on-time departure rate at 86.3 percent.


Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.





Technorati tags:
newspapers
media
Internet
television
music