Hodgetts Darrin, Chamberlain Kerry, Scammell Margaret, Karapu Rolinda, Waimarie Nikora Linda
Department of Psychology, University of Waikato, Massey University, New Zealand.
Health (London). 2008 Jan;12(1):43-66. doi: 10.1177/1363459307083697.
Health is a very prominent news category. However, we know little about the production processes of journalists leading to the health stories we encounter on a daily basis. Such knowledge is crucial for ensuring a vibrant public sphere for health. This article draws on interviews with eight health journalists in New Zealand to document what they consider to constitute a health story, their professional norms and practices, their perceptions of audiences, and the need for increased civic deliberations regarding health. Journalists privilege biomedical stories involving lifestyle and individual responsibility, and have limited frames for presenting stories that involve socio-political concerns. Stories are strongly shaped by journalists' considerations of their target audience, the sources they draw on, their professional norms, and institutional practices. This results in the omission of stories that have relevance for minority and disadvantaged groups and limits the nature of the stories told to ones that reflect the views of the majority. However, journalists are also reflective about these issues and receptive to ways to overcome them. This raises possibilities for health researchers to engage with journalists in order to repoliticise health and promote a more civic-oriented form of health journalism.
健康是一个非常突出的新闻类别。然而，对于记者采写我们日常所见健康报道的生产过程，我们却知之甚少。此类知识对于确保充满活力的健康公共领域至关重要。本文基于对新西兰八位健康记者的访谈，记录了他们认为构成健康报道的要素、他们的职业规范与实践、他们对受众的看法，以及就健康问题加强公民商议的必要性。记者们重视涉及生活方式和个人责任的生物医学报道，对于呈现涉及社会政治问题的报道，其框架有限。报道很大程度上受到记者对目标受众的考量、所采用的消息来源、职业规范以及机构实践的影响。这导致与少数群体和弱势群体相关的报道被遗漏，并将所讲述报道的性质局限于反映多数人观点的那些报道。然而，记者们也在反思这些问题，并乐于接受克服这些问题的方法。这为健康研究人员与记者合作，以便使健康问题重新政治化，并推动一种更具公民导向的健康新闻形式创造了可能性。
