Media bias in portrayals of mortality risks: Comparison of newspaper coverage to death rates

Calvin Isch

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 364, issue C

Abstract: Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States, yet effective preventive measures receive minimal healthcare funding. This disparity may stem from public underestimation of these diseases’ impact and controllability, with distorted media coverage overemphasizing sensational risks and underemphasizing chronic illnesses. This study compares media coverage of mortality risks to objective measures of death rates to investigate such distortions. Data were collected on 14 mortality risks, including monthly US deaths from CDC Wonder and 823,406 relevant articles from major US newspapers via LexisNexis. Regression analyses and qualitative evaluations using natural language processing tools were performed. From 1999 to 2020, a significant disconnect was found between the deadliest risks and their media coverage. Media coverage fluctuations correlated with death rate changes, yet only 1.7–2.8% of the coverage was explained by these rates. Chronic illnesses were described neutrally as individual challenges, while sensational risks were depicted negatively as collective problems. These results illustrate how the media depict a skewed view of the risks facing the public, with disproportionate coverage of sensational risks while comparatively ignoring chronic diseases. Consumers may consequently come to a distorted understanding of the most threatening risks they face and how to combat them.

Keywords: Mass media; Mortality risks; Linear mixed models; Autoregressive distributed lag models; Risk communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117542

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