However, a substantial proportion (25%) included protobacco CC5013 slants. While these included articles related to economics and personal liberty issues such as SLT taxes and bans, a finding also consistent with previous research (Clegg Smith et al., 2006), pro-SLT opinion articles most frequently related to the topic of new products, product regulation, and harm reduction, suggesting that arguments used in support of SLT within the tobacco control community are also used in this public forum. Finally, this study also observed some differences in SLT coverage by news source, though these differences were not all particularly surprising.
National and tobacco hometown papers were the news sources most likely to include original articles focusing on the topics of SLT business, new products, product regulation, and harm reduction, while state papers were most likely to include articles related to topics of more local significance such as SLT taxes, bans, and prevention/cessation. A somewhat more unexpected result of interest was the finding that opinion articles with pro-SLT slants were more frequent in national papers than in state papers. It was also interesting to note that state paper articles were most likely to use the less formal terms ��dip/dipping�� and ��spit tobacco�� when referring to SLT. Several limitations of this study should be noted. Articles were drawn from top circulating national and state newspapers rather than from a random sample and thus results may not be generalizable to other newspapers within states. Furthermore, only those stories meeting the criteria for inclusion (e.
g., multiple SLT references) were analyzed rather than all articles with any SLT reference. The use of electronic news databases to obtain articles limited the ability to measure certain prominence-related variables, such as headline size and images. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Study of tobacco news coverage is important given its potential ability to educate readers about tobacco issues. Indeed, the presence of regular SLT health information in the news may provide a free and ongoing means of reaching broad audiences, while implementation of specific educational campaigns can be expensive, short lived, and sporadic (NCI, 2008). Continued surveillance of SLT news coverage is also warranted given its ability to both reflect and shape people��s perceived importance of and attitudes toward various SLT policy issues.
As described in this study, readers may be exposed to policy discussions of both local and national significance. Furthermore, public health professionals can actively participate in tobacco news coverage by sending press releases Dacomitinib or informational pieces to reporters about new study findings, local events, or resources and/or by submitting opinion pieces to editors to voice their views about particular tobacco topics or to respond to previous tobacco-related coverage.