Injury reporting on local TV news: a prime-time opportunity for prevention

Abstract

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.