Diabetes in the National TV News: 1971–1981

Millions of Americans get virtually all their current events information from the national nightly television news programs. The purpose of this study was to learn what diabetes-related information had been broadcast over the last 11 years by the network news programs. Another objective was to learn how that coverage compared with that given other chronic diseases. The Vanderbilt Television News Archives (VTNA) has videotaped every ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly newscast since mid-1968. The contents of each telecast have been catalogued and indexed. Indexes were searched for every segment that had anything to do with diabetes from 1971 through 1981. In the last 11 years there have been 32 diabetes-related news segments. More than a third were about the controversial attempt to ban saccharin. Because each network may carry essentially the same story, the number of nonoverlapping reports was 20. The total time of the diabetes-related segments was 70 minutes. The topics covered by the news reports included oral agents (5 reports), artificial sweeteners (12), biosynthetic human insulin (BHI) (7), and an assortment of unique items. The 32 diabetes-related segments compare with 23 about arthritis, 215 about heart diseases, and 925 dealing with cancer. A compilation of the nonoverlapping segments has been shown to health professionals, who felt the stories were generally accurate. Diabetes is not portrayed as a killer. Therefore, diabetes seems less serious, and therefore less newsworthy, than heart disease or cancer.