CONTENTS
Chapters
- The News Media and Family Planning Programs
- Building a News Media Relations Program
- Developing a Strategy
- How to Tell the Family Planning Story
- Tools for Analysis
- Matching Your Message to the Medium
- Developing Materials that Interest Journalists
- Making News
- Dealing with Controversy
HIGHLIGHTS
Population Reports is published by the Population
Information Program, Center for Communication Programs, The
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland
21202-4012, USA
Volume XXIII, Number 4
November, 1995 |
The Importance of News Media
Relations
Family planning communication programs have long recognized the importance
of working with the news media (30, 67, 76).
In 1972 the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) urged family
planning programs to pay regular attention to providing information to journalists
in addition to films, radio spots, advertisements, and other communication
(30).
Working with the news media is important because news
coverage is often people's first source of new information. Also,
news coverage helps confirm and reinforce the information that
people receive about family planning programs from other sources,
such as entertainment programs, brochures, field workers, family
members, and friends (28). Particularly where the news media are
independent of official control, people see them as credible,
important sources of information (73).
Informing people and encouraging healthy behavior.
With their broad reach and powerful influence, the news media can help
to improve reproductive health practices. As people are exposed to new
information, ideas, and values—such as using contraception to control
their fertility—many become increasingly aware and interested and, eventually,
some decide to take action. At each stage in this process communication
plays a key role (55, 76). News coverage
can contribute at each step:
- Knowledge stage. Awareness of new information is the first
step toward new behavior. News and feature stories can make
people aware of the benefits of family planning and of the
existence of contraceptive methods and services and can help
overcome myths and false rumors.
- Persuasion stage. Frequent news coverage helps legitimize
family planning, both as a practice and as a topic of
conversation. Feature stories about field workers or family
planning users can present role models.
- Decision stage. News coverage helps people make informed
choices about using contraception based on expert opinion
and others' experiences.
- Action stage. News and feature stories can inform people
about how to take action, such as how to use contraceptive
methods, where and when to go for services, and how much
they cost.
- Confirmation and advocacy stage. Coverage in the news media
can reinforce individual decisions to adopt family planning
and can serve as a forum for members of the public and
opinion leaders to endorse family planning and offer
testimonials from personal experience.
Influencing policymakers. Accurate news coverage often helps
family planning and other reproductive health care programs earn
the support of national policymakers(29). Their commitment is
important on both the supply and demand sides—to assure the
resources to provide services and to endorse popular interest in
using them (60).
Policymakers follow the news media closely because the news
both reflects and shapes popular opinion (52, 63). In many
countries the news media set the agenda for public discussion and
debate by deciding what issues to cover and how to report on them
(65). By drawing a situation to public attention, the news media
sometimes even seem to create events rather than just report them (64).
Policymakers pay attention to stories with such headlines as:
- "Poor Lands' Success in Cutting Birth Rate Upsets Old
Theories" (The New York Times, January 2, 1994);
- "Refugee Centre Sits on Population Time Bomb" (The Mail,
Ghana, July 5, 1994);
- "Who'll Have to Pay? The Cost of Dealing with AIDS in Asia
Will Run into the Billions" (AsiaWeek, November 1993).
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