Abstract

Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Physician-Assisted Suicide:
A Community Structure Approach

Physician-assisted suicide has recently been a topic of vigorous debate, yet few studies seek to explore this highly charged topic as a communication issue. Unlike other studies exploring the impact of media on society, this investigation examines the impact of society on media, specifically linking city characteristics to systematic content analysis of newspaper coverage of physician-assisted suicide.

Specifically, this study maps the way newspapers from a national cross-section of cities across the United States differ in their coverage of physician-assisted suicide. The community structure approach initiated by Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien (1973, 1980), and tested nationwide by Pollock and others (1977, 1978, 1995-2000), suggests that certain demographic structures of a community are systematically linked to newspaper reporting on critical issues. This approach was used to test a set of hypotheses exploring the correlation between city characteristics and newspaper reporting on physician-assisted suicide (A similar study of coverage of Dr. Jack Kevorkian was published in Newspaper Research Journal by Pollock, Coughlin, Thomas & Connaughton, 1996).

A sample of the longest newspaper articles printed on the topic that were over one paragraph in length (up to twenty for each of fifteen newspapers) was drawn from a DIALOG newspaper database, collected from the four-year period of January 1, 1993 through January 1, 1997. The resulting 288 articles were then analyzed using both content and a variety of statistical analyses. Content analysis was accomplished by combining the amount of attention an article received (placement, headline size, story length, presence of photos) and overall article direction (favorable, unfavorable, or balanced/neutral) to yield a single score, a Media Vector, for each newspaper.

Using Pearson correlations, factor analysis and multiple stepwise regression, two city characteristic factors emerged as substantially significant in their association with widely varied newspaper reporting on physician-assisted suicide. A major "stakeholder" factor, age (percentage of a city population over 75) is associated strongly with relatively unfavorable coverage of physician-assisted euthanasia (r = -.491; p =000). Conversely, the "access" factor -- combining access to media (large newspaper circulation, number of cable stations, FM or AM stations) and access to health care (larger number of health care facilities, number of physicians per 100,000 population) -- is linked to relatively favorable newspaper coverage of the issue. (r =.472; p = .000). The age "stakeholder" factor and the "access" factor, taken together, account for 46.3 percent of the variance. Comparing Media Vector scores with regional variations in public opinion, both western newspapers and public opinion are more favorable to physician-assisted euthanasia than they are in other regions of the US. This study, part of a continuing series exploring the relation of city characteristics to newspaper coverage of "critical events" such as, Magic Johnson's announcement, Dr. Kevorkian's activities or tobacco's Master Settlement Agreement, confirms the strong association nationwide between community structure and media alignment with political and social change.