by Lori Dorfman and David Tuller | San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
BMSG Director Lori Dorfman and David Tuller, senior fellow in public health and journalism at U.C. Berkeley, use the opinion pages to argue that the COVID-19 pandemic requires politics to be set aside in the interest of the public’s health. When experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci correct medical misinformation but avoid commenting on the president’s political pronouncements, they lend implicit credibility to the Trump brand, Dorfman and Tuller explain. “Dedicated scientists should be able to perform their life-saving duties without having to navigate the political minefields of a presidential election campaign. The long-term consequences of placing public health officials in such an untenable position are likely to be devastating.”
by Amanda Terkel | HuffPost
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
In this piece for HuffPost, BMSG Director Lori Dorfman weighs in on what’s at stake for health when the president continually casts doubt on the credibility of the media: “It is horrifying now that we are facing a highly contagious disease that is frightening and confusing. To watch Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. Birx have to come to podium to correct — again and again — the misinformation from the mouth of a president is awful. It’s painful to watch because the consequences are huge.”
by Amanda Darrach | Columbia Journalism Review
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
As coverage of COVID-19 increases, news outlets in the United States may be driving racism against Asian people across the globe, notes BMSG’s Pamela Mejia. Articles often use exoticizing language and clichés when describing Asian culture, and images featuring Asians in face masks add to the stigma.
by Abené Clayton | The Guardian
Friday, December 13, 2019
Researchers analyzed four commonly cited public databases and found that the reported number of mass shootings in 2017 ranged from 11 to 346. The lack of a standardized definition for a mass shooting has implications for gun violence prevention policy, and some types of violence, such as domestic and community violence, get overlooked in news coverage. “The news has a big role to play in what we are and aren’t talking and thinking about,” said Pamela Mejia, the head researcher for BMSG. “We can’t solve a problem that we don’t know is happening.”
by John Washington | The Intercept
Monday, December 09, 2019
The additional family separations bring the total number of children impacted to at least 5,446, yet media attention to the issue has waned, according to an analysis by Pamela Mejia, head of research at BMSG. And although people widely view the children’s treatment as unnecessarily cruel, the separations continued, leading to a sense of futility and media burnout.
by Abené Clayton | The Guardian
Wednesday, November 06, 2019
After a mass shooting that killed five people from lower income parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, many residents were left questioning whether media coverage would be different if the victims were white or from more affluent areas. Reporting from The Guardian points to research from BMSG on how race and gun violence appear in the news and how coverage often perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
by Brian Malte | Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Research from BMSG, supported by the Hope and Heal Fund, sheds light on the often simplistic and distorted ways that many media outlets report on gun violence. Coverage is primarily driven by public mass shootings and episodic community shootings, with too little attention paid to firearm-involved suicides and domestic violence. As Brian Malte notes in this op-ed, this unbalanced view affects how policymakers view the issue and hobbles efforts to promote prevention.
by Katherine Schaff | San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Responding to an article about a rise in homelessness in Oakland, California, BMSG’s Katherine Schaff uses this letter to the editor to expand the conversation from the problem to potential solutions, such as tenant protections and affordable housing. “We know what we need to do,” she writes. “We just need the political will to make it happen.”
by Kathleen Puri | The New York Times
Wednesday, June 05, 2019
In this letter to the editor, a registered nurse commends the Times for highlighting nurses’ voices in recent coverage. She notes that’s a rarity, referencing research from Berkeley Media Studies Group and George Washington University School of Nursing’s Center for Health Policy & Media Engagement, which found that nurses are quoted in only 2% of stories about health policy.
by Jeremy Loudenback | The Chronicle of Social Change
Friday, April 12, 2019
The overlap between domestic violence and child maltreatment is profound. However, media coverage of child welfare — the system that is charged with taking care of abused and neglected children — seldom makes this connection, according to a new study from the Berkeley Media Studies Group.
