"We're Part of the Solution": Evolution of the Food and Beverage Industry's Framing of Obesity Concerns Between 2000 and 2012.

We investigated how industry claim-makers countered concerns about obesity and other nutrition-related diseases in newspaper coverage from 2000, the year before the US Surgeon General's Call to Action on obesity, through 2012. We found that the food and beverage industry evolved in its response. The defense arguments were made by trade associations, industry-funded nonprofit groups, and individual companies representing the packaged food industry, restaurants, and the nonalcoholic beverage industry. Individual companies used the news primarily to promote voluntary self-regulation, whereas trade associations and industry-supported nonprofit groups directly attacked potential government regulations. There was, however, a shift away from framing obesity as a personal issue toward an overall message that the food and beverage industry wants to be "part of the solution" to the public health crisis.

Tobacco industry use of personal responsibility rhetoric in public relations and litigation: disguising freedom to blame as freedom of choice.

We examined the tobacco industry's rhetoric to frame personal responsibility arguments. The industry rarely uses the phrase "personal responsibility" explicitly, but rather "freedom of choice." When freedom of choice is used in the context of litigation, the industry means that those who choose to smoke are solely to blame for their injuries. When used in the industry's public relations messages, it grounds its meaning in the concept of liberty and the right to smoke. The courtroom "blame rhetoric" has influenced the industry's larger public relations message to shift responsibility away from the tobacco companies and onto their customers. Understanding the rhetoric and framing that the industry employs is essential to combating this tactic, and we apply this comprehension to other industries that act as disease vectors.

Fast-food fights: news coverage of local efforts to improve food environments through land-use regulations, 2001-2013. [corrected].

Zoning and other land-use policies are a promising but controversial strategy to improve community food environments. To understand how these policies are debated, we searched existing databases and the Internet and analyzed news coverage and legal documentation of efforts to restrict fast-food restaurants in 77 US communities in 2001 to 2013. Policies intended to improve community health were most often proposed in urban, racially diverse communities; policies proposed in small towns or majority-White communities aimed to protect community aesthetics or local businesses. Health-focused policies were subject to more criticism than other policies and were generally less successful. Our findings could inform the work of advocates interested in employing land-use policies to improve the food environment in their own communities.

The debate on regulating menthol cigarettes: closing a dangerous loophole vs freedom of choice.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act exempted menthol from a flavoring additive ban, tasking the Tobacco Products Safety Advisory Committee to advise on the scientific evidence on menthol. To inform future tobacco control efforts, we examined the public debate from 2008 to 2011 over the exemption. Health advocates regularly warned of menthol's public health damages, but inconsistently invoked the health disparities borne by African American smokers. Tobacco industry spokespeople insisted that making menthol available put them on the side of African Americans' struggle for justice and enlisted civil rights groups to help them make that case. In future debates, public health must prioritize and invest in the leadership of communities most affected by health harms to ensure a strong, unrelenting voice in support of health equity.

Cigarettes become a dangerous product: tobacco in the rearview mirror, 1952-1965.

Tobacco control's unparalleled success comes partly from advocates broadening the focus of responsibility beyond the smoker to include industry and government. To learn how this might apply to other issues, we examined how early tobacco control events were framed in news, legislative testimony, and internal tobacco industry documents. Early debate about tobacco is stunning for its absence of the personal responsibility rhetoric prominent today, focused instead on the health harms from cigarettes. The accountability of government, rather than the industry or individual smokers, is mentioned often; solutions focused not on whether government had a responsibility to act, but on how to act. Tobacco lessons can guide advocates fighting the food and beverage industry, but must be reinterpreted in current political contexts.

The origins of personal responsibility rhetoric in news coverage of the tobacco industry.

The tobacco industry consistently frames smoking as a personal issue rather than the responsibility of cigarette companies. To identify when personal responsibility framing became a major element of the tobacco industry's discourse, we analyzed news coverage from 1966 to 1991. Industry representatives began to regularly use these arguments in 1977. By the mid 1980s, this frame dominated the industry's public arguments. This chronology illustrates that the tobacco industry's use of personal responsibility rhetoric in public preceded the ascension of personal responsibility rhetoric commonly associated with the Reagan Administration in the 1980s.

Marketing sugary cereals to children in the digital age: a content analysis of 17 child-targeted websites.

The Institute of Medicine has warned of the harm of food marketing to children from television to new media channels such as the Internet. The authors identified and analyzed the techniques used to engage children on websites from cereal companies--the third largest food marketer to children. The authors found that top breakfast cereal manufacturers maintain child-oriented websites, using strategies unique to the Internet to capture and maintain children's attention. These include branded engagement techniques such as advergames, videos, site registration, and viral marketing, including inviting friends to join the site. The authors found 3 progressive levels of telepresence on child-targeted cereal websites: sites with more than 1 engaging feature, multiple techniques present on individual pages, and the construction of a virtual world. Using Internet traffic data, the authors confirm that these techniques work: cereal marketers reach children online with lengthier and more sophisticated engagements than are possible with traditional, passive media such as television advertisements or product packaging. Despite the cereal manufacturer's self-regulatory pledge to improve their marketing to children, their marketing practices exploit children's susceptibility to advertising by almost exclusively promoting high-sugar cereals using deeply engaging techniques.

News coverage of child sexual abuse and prevention, 2007-2009.

News media coverage of child sexual abuse can help policymakers and the public understand what must be done to prevent future abuse, but coverage tends to focus on extreme cases. This article presents an analysis of newspaper coverage from 2007 to 2009 to describe how the daily news presents and frames day-to-day stories about child sexual abuse. When child sexual abuse receives news attention, the stories focus primarily on the criminal justice details of a specific incident rather than contextual information about causes of and solutions to child sexual abuse, and prevention is rarely addressed. We offer suggestions for strategies that advocates can use to help reporters improve news coverage so that it better contextualizes child sexual abuse and links it to prevention policies.

Newspaper coverage of maternal health in Bangladesh, Rwanda and South Africa: a quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

OBJECTIVE: To examine newspaper coverage of maternal health in three countries that have made varying progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG 5): Bangladesh (on track), Rwanda (making progress, but not on track) and South Africa (no progress). DESIGN: We analysed each country's leading national English-language newspaper: Bangladesh's The Daily Star, Rwanda's The New Times/The Sunday Times, and South Africa's Sunday Times/The Times. We quantified the number of maternal health articles published from 1 January 2008 to 31 March 2013. We conducted a content analysis of subset of 190 articles published from 1 October 2010 to 31 March 2013. RESULTS: Bangladesh's The Daily Star published 579 articles related to maternal health from 1 January 2008 to 31 March 2013, compared to 342 in Rwanda's The New Times/The Sunday Times and 253 in South Africa's Sunday Times/The Times over the same time period. The Daily Star had the highest proportion of stories advocating for or raising awareness of maternal health. Most maternal health articles in The Daily Star (83%) and The New Times/The Sunday Times (69%) used a 'human-rights' or 'policy-based' frame compared to 41% of articles from Sunday Times/The Times. CONCLUSIONS: In the three countries included in this study, which are on different trajectories towards MDG 5, there were differences in the frequency, tone and content of their newspaper coverage of maternal health. However, no causal conclusions can be drawn about this association between progress on MDG 5 and the amount and type of media coverage of maternal health.

Food and Beverage Marketing to Youth.

After nearly a decade of concern over the role of food and beverage marketing to youth in the childhood obesity epidemic, American children and adolescents - especially those from communities of color - are still immersed in advertising and marketing environments that primarily promote unhealthy foods and beverages. Despite some positive steps, the evidence shows that the food and beverage industry self-regulation alone is not likely to significantly reduce marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to youth. A variety of research is needed to monitor industry marketing of unhealthy products to young people, and identify the most promising approaches to improve children's food marketing environments. The continued presence of unhealthy marketing toward children despite years of industry self-regulation suggests it is time for stronger action by policymakers to protect young people from harmful marketing practices.