publications

Big Soda’s long shadow: news coverage of local proposals to tax sugar-sweetened beverages in Richmond, El Monte and Telluride

Monday, December 15, 2014

In 2012 and 2013, Richmond and El Monte, CA, and Telluride, CO, became the first communities in the country to vote on citywide sugary drink taxes. In the face of massive spending from the soda industry, all three proposals failed, but the vigorous public debates they inspired provide valuable insights for future policy efforts. BMSG analyzed local and national news coverage of the three proposals to find out what arguments were being made for and against the taxes, whose voices dominated the coverage, and what this means for advocates.

Video: Soda & kids: A predatory relationship and how we can fight back

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

BMSG Director Lori Dorfman shares research on soda industry marketing in this panel, as part of a speaker series leading up to the November 2014 election, which featured soda tax ballot measures in Berkeley and San Francisco. Dorfman discusses how the soda industry has become the number one educator influencing what kids drink and the tactics it uses to target children of color.

Video: Testimony of Pamela Mejia: How the news portrays domestic violence

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

At an October 14, 2014, hearing of the California Assembly Select Committee on Domestic Violence, BMSG Senior Media Researcher Pamela Mejia speaks about the influence of news coverage on the public’s and policymakers’ understanding of domestic violence and how to address it.

Soda tax debates: An analysis of news coverage of the 2013 soda tax proposal in Telluride, Colorado

Thursday, October 09, 2014

In 2013, the small mountain town of Telluride, Colorado, proposed a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. Like two similar soda tax measures that came before it in Richmond and El Monte, California, the proposal failed. In this report, we analyze what arguments were made for and against the tax in the news, whose voices dominated the conversation, and how coverage of Telluride compared with that of Richmond and El Monte.

Food and beverage marketing to youth

Monday, September 29, 2014

What tactics are food and beverage companies using to target youth — especially youth of color — with marketing for unhealthy products? How do kids’ brains respond to seeing food ads and logos? Is industry self-regulation working? In this paper, BMSG’s Andrew Cheyne, Pamela Mejia, Laura Nixon and Lori Dorfman explore these questions and discuss implications for policy interventions.

Advertising unhealthy foods to children

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Despite the efforts of nutrition advocates and health educators, food and beverage companies are a major source of children’s education about food, and most of the marketing messages they receive are for unhealthy products. In this entry for the Encyclopedia of Health Communication, we provide an overview of food marketing to kids, its link to health inequities in communities of color, and the policy landscape for intervening.

Video: Engaging communications to create healthy environments

Thursday, September 04, 2014

In this July 23 presentation for the 2014 Colorado Health Symposium, BMSG Director Lori Dorfman discusses why health education and data don’t go far enough toward improving health at the population-level, and how communication, particularly media advocacy, can be used to change policy and create environments that better support health for everyone.

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

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Stoking fears of job loss and strategically positioning itself on the side of civil rights groups, the tobacco industry influenced news coverage of mentholated cigarettes — which disproportionately impact the health of African Americans — to prevent a ban on them, found researchers at BMSG and the Public Health Advocacy Institute in a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Video: Corporations, consumption and protecting public health

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes cause 7 out of every 10 deaths in the United States. In this video, BMSG’s Lori Dorfman and public health attorney Michele Simon join Nicholas Freudenberg, author of Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health, to discuss how the business practices of alcohol, tobacco, food and other industries are causing these illnesses and what tools, including policy, advocates can use to prevent them.

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

Friday, April 18, 2014

To deflect blame for its products’ health harms, the tobacco industry consistently frames smoking as a personal issue rather than the responsibility of cigarette companies. A study from BMSG and our colleagues at the Public Health Advocacy Institute, published in the American Journal of Public Health, identifies when personal responsibility framing became a major element of the industry’s discourse and explores how its messages evolved over time to meet political and legal challenges.

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