[Assessment of the transplantation scandal by the media : scientific discourse analysis of selected German newspapers].

BACKGROUND

The press is an important medium and plays a significant role as an information source for people. Moreover, the daily press transmits opinion-forming contents. During the German "transplantation scandal" various articles were published in the German press focusing on organ donation, transplantation, allocation of organs and brain death determination. Selected important newspaper articles were analyzed using a scientific text analysis as it was assumed that the publications might have had an important influence on attitudes or mistrust of transplantation medicine.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A total of 216 articles from Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Zeit published between summer 2012 and early 2013, which focused on the transplantation scandal were analyzed using a modern form of scientific text analysis. From these articles 12 categories of contents were identified which were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

RESULTS

Most articles were published between June and August 2012 when the accusations of organ allocation manipulation were made public. A second wave was found in the early months of 2013, when the court proceedings against the predominantly blamed physician began. Most of the categories (63.8 %) transmitted a negative evaluative opinion (i.e. loss of confidence, enrichment of the persons involved, fraud, misconduct, rejection of brain death and disturbing the peace of the dead) leading to mistrust of transplantation per se, while the minority (36.2 %) were categorized as endeavoring to convey objective information, focus on ethical responsibility for organ donation or the problems of organ shortage. Furthermore, a striking increase of articles doubting the concept of brain death was observed.

CONCLUSION

German newspapers as important opinion-leading and opinion-forming media have a substantial impact in accomplishing the demands for objective and factual information of transplantation medicine. Physicians, ethicists, journalists and politicians are invoked to have a closer collaboration in the future.