Television news programs are a popular source of information for many different areas of life, and increasingly for health-related topics. However, relying on health information without verifying its accuracy may not be wise because failure to do so may lead to personal injury. When news programs do not explicitly cite the sources of their health information, it is hard for viewers to go through a validation process. Therefore, the purpose of this content analysis was to investigate how well a variety of news broadcasts cited their sources for health-related stories. Researchers also wanted to determine what specific health topics were covered the most and how much time was dedicated to health-related stories on each program. For this project, three local news programs (WLOS News 13, WYFF News 4, and ABC7 On Your Side), three nationally broadcasted networks (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC), and two political satire shows (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report) were evaluated from 10/23/13-10/31/13. Only a small portion of each program related to health, and stories on personal injury seemed to dominate the coverage. MSNBC and the satire news programs did not feature many health-related stories. Local news consistently cited their sources well since most of their reports were supplemented by interview clips, in which expert names were clearly provided. Both CNN and Fox News had a fairly equal mix of sources that were cited well and sources that were cited poorly. Based on study results, national news networks have room for improvement in providing information on quality of sources.
