Medical and health stories on the Syndey Morning Herald's front page

Front-page coverage of medical and health stories in the Sydney Morning Herald over the one-year period, April 1992 to March 1993, was analysed. Features of the front-page stories, such as major topics, geographic location, visual imagery, use of news actors and news sources, the representation of medicine and health, the use of language in headlines, and dominant and recurring discourses were examined. Although front-page coverage was often contradictory and paradoxical, allowing space for alternative views on the value or otherwise of medical treatment and preventive health measures, it was predominantly conservative, giving greater voice to elite groups than less powerful groups, such as advocacy, activist and community groups, and to men rather than women. It tended to individualise illness rather than place it in its broader socioeconomic and political contexts.