Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Everymind, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2023 Dec;69(8):2110-2120. doi: 10.1177/00207640231194481. Epub 2023 Aug 29.
News reporting on mental illness can perpetuate stigma. An understanding of the current picture of such reporting is important to identify areas for improvement. This study investigated the quality of Australian news media coverage of complex mental illness in the context of crime and violence over a 2-year period, prior to the release of new media guidelines.
This research utilised a systematic search of Australian news articles that were published between July 2018 and July 2020 and reported on mental illness in relation to violent crime. Researchers developed a Mental Illness and Crime Reporting Quality Framework to determine quality scores for news articles according to 11 relevant factors in media guidelines. An additional 11 characteristics of articles were extracted for further descriptive analysis.
One-hundred and twenty-eight Australian news articles met inclusion criteria. The average quality score was 50 ( = 13.91) out of a possible maximum score of 100 (range 11-78). Strengths and weaknesses were identified as some criteria were consistently met, and other criteria were met rarely or not at all. There were emerging trends between quality scores and article characteristics, including publication source, though these analyses were not statistically significant.
The findings indicate that Australian news coverage of complex mental illness and violent crime met half of the criteria of reporting guidelines that minimises risk of perpetuating or reinforcing stigma. This demonstrates significant opportunity to improve the overall quality of media reporting on crime and mental illness. Future research should evaluate the impact of the guidelines on the quality of news reporting after their implementation by utilising a similar methodology, using these findings as a baseline measure.
有关精神疾病的新闻报道可能会加剧污名化。了解当前此类报道的情况对于确定需要改进的领域非常重要。本研究在新的媒体指南发布之前，在两年的时间里，调查了澳大利亚新闻媒体对复杂精神疾病与犯罪和暴力相关报道的质量，在此期间，澳大利亚新闻媒体对复杂精神疾病与犯罪和暴力相关报道的质量。
本研究利用系统搜索，检索了 2018 年 7 月至 2020 年 7 月期间澳大利亚新闻报道中有关精神疾病与暴力犯罪的文章。研究人员制定了《精神疾病与犯罪报道质量框架》，根据媒体指南中的 11 个相关因素，为新闻文章确定质量评分。此外，还提取了 11 个文章特征，用于进一步的描述性分析。
符合纳入标准的澳大利亚新闻文章共有 128 篇。平均质量评分为 50（ = 13.91），满分为 100 分（范围为 11-78）。一些标准得到了一致满足，而其他标准则很少或根本没有得到满足，确定了优势和劣势。质量评分和文章特征之间存在一些趋势，包括出版来源，但这些分析没有统计学意义。
研究结果表明，澳大利亚关于复杂精神疾病与暴力犯罪的新闻报道满足了尽量减少污名化风险的报道指南的一半标准。这表明有很大的机会可以提高媒体对犯罪和精神疾病报道的整体质量。未来的研究应该评估在指南实施后，利用类似的方法，利用这些发现作为基线测量，利用这些发现作为基线测量，评估指南对新闻报道质量的影响。
