The coverage of health in the Portuguese press

Abstract

In the past few years, the Portuguese press has been showing a growing interest in covering health, which also reflects the public's interest in these matters. Our research presents an analysis of all the health news published in six different Portugueses newspapers from 2012 to 2014. We analyze the health pieces and the quoted news sources, drawing a profile of the health news sources journalists most talk to in the Portuguese press. In this study, we are interested in revealing the themes, diseases and sources journalists shed light into when covering the health beat, but also the ones that are thrown to the silent margins.