La Salud y la biomedicina en la prensa diaria : un análisis de diez años

Drawing on a systematic longitudinal monitoring of health and medicine texts published
by the five Spanish newspapers leaders in sales (El País, El Mundo, ABC, La
Vanguardia and El Periódico), this paper aims for contributing to increase the understanding
on the underlying processes of health and biomedical news coverage. Data collection
and analysis were performed during a decade (from January 1st, 1997 through December 31st, 2006). This researchs main finds are: a) despite the large amount of
published texts (88.555), the information gathered around a very limited group of subjects;
b) the analysis allowed the identification of two different news coverage patterns,
which have been named «acute pattern» and «chronic pattern», respectively; c) three
out of five of the newspapers under consideration have enlarged the space of sections
specialized in health and/or science since the year 2000; and d) Three different modes
of interaction between journalists and the health administration have been identified.