This study comes to shed light on the level of media coverage attempted by local daily newspapers, and the extent of their interest in the reporting on the writing about population reproductive health/family planning related issues.
The methodology followed was characterized by an analytical approach to better understand the scope of coverage the selected newspapers allocated for issues of population reproductive health, and the journalistic types of writing such issues channeled through. It further stressed on the importance of objectives, values and the sources of information such media outlets possesses and utilize in their news coverage.
The study at hand comes as an aftermath of the preliminary study conducted by the Higher Population Council (HPC) in 2008 and the needs assessment session of 2009 to measure the effect of the councils designated programs and activities in response to the issues tackled upon and recommendations made by a number of experts in an attempt to touch base with the reality media coverage of topics of population reproductive health and what is required from the council to better mirror the reality of its efforts and the higher aims of spreading public awareness about such issues. Further more, the council took the initiative in conducting three workshops in January 2010 aimed at improving the knowledge and writing skills in the areas of population and reproductive health issues.
This study analyzed the coverage of four Jordanian daily newspapers during the second half of 2008 and the first half of 2010 by scanning and measuring local media coverage of population reproductive health and related topics. The four selected newspapers (namely al Rai, al Dustour, al Ghad and al Arab Al Yawm) were analyzed based on a twelve-issues statistics through which factors such as area (cm/column) and content (repetition) were taken into consideration.
The study showed that the media coverage of population issues improved to count for 2.5% of the general quota of the Jordanian newspapers compared to 1.2% in the former 2008 study, but still severely inadequate if compared to the other content categories that occupy space in the daily newspapers.
The study results have shown that a significant overall progress have occurred in regard to the number of published articles and the space allocated for population reproductive health issues. The difference was almost the double in both categories, a finding that illustrated the extent to which media coverage have directed more attention to tackle on the analytical perspective of such topics. This in turn served to clarify their crucially to the targeted general public in accordance with the aims of the HPC. Such findings dictate for the necessity to unite efforts by media bodies, under the guidance of the HPC, to further cover issues related to population reproductive health/family planning and the drafting of a numerous strategies along with awareness campaigns, comprehensive analytical coverage and the evaluation of the activities post its implementation, all in an aim to highlight the efforts made as well as the goals attained in this field.
