Print media coverage on health issues: an analysis on the local dailies of rangpur, bangladesh

Abstract

Health is considered as a prerequisite for sustainable development in Bangladesh. But it has engulfed with numerous challenges and difficulties. Mass media especially newspaper has significant responsibility in health message dissemination and activity based awareness creation among the people. That’s why; this study aims at revealing the real scenario of local newspaper coverage on health issues in the study area. Mixed method approach has been applied to the study. Two dailies of Rangpur The Daily Juger Alo (DJA) and The Dabanol (DD) have been purposively selected considering circulation, availability and social acceptance. The study time is one year (FY 2023-24) and total number of unit 104, 52 units of each daily (One unit per week). Primary data has been collected through content analysis and observation method. Collected data has been processed, analyzed and presented through Microsoft excel. Then Descriptive analysis has been applied in the discussion. Both dailies provided a very limited coverage towards health news. DJA published 102 (2.57%) health news among 3,960 news and DD published 56 (3.02%) health news among 1,855 news during the study period. They published the news mainly in inner page positioning upper folder. They published mainly normal news ignoring the diversity of news and solution oriented journalism. Both dailies were almost reluctant to emphasize the health issue during the time. A responsible and participatory engagement based approach is needed to ensure effective health coverage in the newspapers of Bangladesh.