Is tobacco and alcohol advertising related to editorial content in a national sample of black and mainstream newspapers?

Background. Newspapers continue to depend on alcohol and tobacco advertisements for revenue. No study has investigated whether such service and product advertising may relate to editorial coverage. Purpose. The study evaluates whether the amount and type of alcohol and tobacco advertising in newspapers affects editorial content within these newspapers. Significance. No study has examined whether both tobacco and alcohol-related products and services (i.e., for nicotine replacement therapy, alcoholic recovery programs) may influence editorial content. Methodology. 6522 newspaper issues from 24 Black newspapers and 12 community-matched mainstream newspapers published between June 1, 2004 and May 31, 2007 were examined. Trained coders identified all health and cancer news stories, and tobacco and alcohol-related product and service advertisements (kalpha >.75). Findings/Results. Having alcohol or tobacco product advertising in a newspaper issue is not related to having health stories published in the issue (p > .05). Having a tobacco product advertisement (p < .05) and having one or more tobacco control advertisements (p <.05) both are positively associated with a newspaper issue having more than one cancer story. Not having tobacco control advertising makes it significantly more likely that Black newspaper issues will have no health stories (p < .01). Tobacco service and product ads were significant predictors in Black newspapers publishing a cancer story. These relationships did not hold in the mainstream newspaper sample. Conclusions/Recommendations. This research confirms and extends Rouner et al's findings that there is no relationship between the amount of tobacco and alcohol advertisements and newspaper editorial coverage.