May 28, 2009

H1N1 news around the world

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Interesting look at international coverage of the H1N1 flu story in a new analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

They studied 12 days of front-page newspaper coverage in seven countries around the world.

Key points from their summary:

The three major U.S. papers studied offered some of the broadest coverage of the outbreak of any country studied, and all stories were staff-generated, as opposed to wire copy. Despite complaints in some quarters of excessive media hype, the level of coverage was relatively moderate when matched up against the number of confirmed U.S. cases.

The number of cases of swine flu in a given country had little to do with the volume of coverage around the world. China, for example, had the fewest confirmed cases of any of the countries studied (1), but the paper studied, People’s Daily, offered about as much front-page coverage as the average paper in the U.S., which had over 2000 cases.

In Mexico, extensive coverage by El Universal (20 front-page stories over the 12 days) cut across a broad range of issues, from the impact on businesses to the history of the virus. But the Mexican paper largely skipped any close assessment of its own government’s response.

The French paper Le Figaro was more restrained but also controversial in its coverage. The paper ran just two stories on the front pages, but sparked an outcry by terming the outbreak “the Mexican flu.”

In the Spanish-language papers in the U.S., one of the most striking findings was a heavy reliance by two of the three—El Diario and El Nuevo Herald—on U.S. wire service copy to fill their pages.

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N95 Flu Respirators

July 27, 2009 at 12:35 pm

I’m surprised the level of coverage was moderate compared to the actual amount of cases in the United States. Why with this but not when it comes to plane accident stories (which seem to increase greatly when one crash makes big headlines)?

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