Attitudes of saudi media towards world health events

Mass media are very important in health education programmes. Health promoters rely on them to play a crucial role in their campaign.

The aim of the study was to study the patterns of contribution of the Saudi daily newspapers on two international health occasion during the year 1416H (World AIDS Day 1995 and World Health Day 1996).

The study was retrospective, carried out by reviewing eight daily Saudi newspapers including all issues covering three months before and extending three weeks after each occasion. All newspaper materials concerning the two occasions were specified, and data obtained from them included types of materials, topics and characteristics of the paper.

The study revealed that the newspapers gave more coverage to World AIDS Day than on World Health Day. This meant that journalists considered that AIDS was more interesting to the readers than the environmental topic of World Health Day. Most of the materials especially in World Health Day were published in the inner pages. These findings are in consonance with previous work, which showed that Saudi journalists had little interest in environmental issues. Nearly two thirds of the materials were news items about ministerial and activities of other organizations. Informative articles on health education and readers' participation were minimal.

It was concluded that newspapers took not much interest on health matters especially health education.