February 28, 2007 – The importance placed on health in Canada, as much in our private lives as in the political and public spheres, would not be reflected in the Canadian media.
Health occupied only 1.5% of Canadian media space, from 1er January 2006 to January 31, 2007, compared to 4% for arts and culture and 20% for sports, according to a study by the firm Influence Communication. “The environment has also been the subject of greater coverage than health, while citizens seem to attach more importance to their health than to environmental issues”, underlines Jean-François Dumas, president of Influence Communication.1.
More popular causes of death
The firm compared the percentage of headlines granted to certain diseases – or causes of death – to the leading causes of death in the country2.3. She concludes that there is little correlation between the space devoted to a cause of death (cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.) and its actual incidence.
“It has been observed that suicide is at the top of the list with 26.69% of all the news devoted to health while it occupies the twelfth place among the causes of death”, cites Jean-François Dumas as an example. AIDS ranks second with 16.59% of all health media coverage, although it ranks 22e rank of causes of death. Conversely, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases – the first and third leading causes of death – were the subject of only 10.8% of health news.
“This tells us that some advocacy groups may be more effective than others. For example, we talk a lot more about genital herpes than prostate cancer, yet more important and how much more deadly! Moreover, in a context where journalists are increasingly short of time for their assignments, groups that are able to provide information quickly and in an organized manner have an advantage, ”he continues.
Taboo diseases
He also points out that some diseases are even more easily talked about than others. For example, breast cancer receives more attention than prostate cancer, at a rate of five to one, although both are the sixth leading cause of death. “It must also be said that men are reluctant to talk about their illnesses; finding spokespersons is not that easy. “
Despite the attention paid to the health system in the Quebec media – overcrowding of emergency rooms and cases of It’s hard – Quebec does not stand out from the other provinces. “Quebec is at the center of the peloton. It barely exceeds the national average with 1.8%, ”says Jean-François Dumas.
Note that the firm took into account all of the Canadian media for its analysis, therefore both print and electronic media and the Internet – including the website HealthPassport.net. Specialized channels devoted to sports, music, the economy or continuous information were also part of the corpus studied. There is therefore little or no question of health on the specialty channels and few newspapers devote entire sections to this subject compared to sports and the arts and entertainment.
Claudia Morissette – HealthPassport.net
1. Influence Communication is an information broker for several companies. It provides its clients, according to its needs, with all news of interest from the following media: newspapers, radio, television and the Internet.
2. For more information: www.influencecommunication.ca.
