Injury Reporting on Local TV News: A Prime-Time Opportunity for Prevention
Background
Local television news is America's primary source of information and may be an opportunity to shape public opinion surrounding issues such as injury prevention.
Objective
This study sought to systematically evaluate unintentional-injury coverage on local television news and to identify frequently interviewed public-service professionals and factors associated with discussion of risk factors and prevention.
Methods
Late news broadcasts from 122 local television stations within the U.S. during October 2002 were analyzed. The main outcomes variables were counts of case-injury stories: motor-vehicle crashes, fires, falls, drowning, poisonings, and sports–recreational injuries; identification of interviewed public service professionals; and discussion of risk factors and prevention. Bivariate and mulitvariate analysis was performed to identify predictors of discussion of prevention measures, risk factors, or both. Data were analyzed in Fall 2006.
Results
From 2795 broadcasts, 1748 case-injury stories were identified. Fires and motor-vehicle crashes constituted 84% of the case-injury stories. There were 245 case-injury stories containing an interview with a public service professional. Police officers and firefighters accounted for 82% of these interviews. Interviews with police officers and firefighters were independently associated with discussion of risk factors and prevention measures for motor-vehicle crashes (OR=2.49, CI=1.7–3.6) and fires (OR=2.77, CI=1.2–5.9), respectively.
Conclusions
Motor-vehicle crashes and fires were the most commonly reported injury topics. Police officers and firefighters were most commonly interviewed and, if interviewed, increased the likelihood that risk factors, prevention measures, or both were discussed. Optimizing the messages delivered by public service professionals through public service professional-level and media-level interventions may be an opportunity for disseminating injury-prevention information to the public and to policymakers, and methods to increase the likelihood of media interviews with public service professionals should be explored.
aDepartment of Emergency Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
bDepartment of Health Policy and Management, Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
cDepartments of Political Science and Communications, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
dDepartment of Emergency Medicine, Injury Research Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: James M. Pribble, MD, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Michigan, 300 NIB 2C40, Box 5437, Ann Arbor MI 48109-0437.
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