Views of Negativity in U.S. Newspaper Coverage of the Canadian Health System: How Health Policy Experts on Opposite Sides of the 49th Parallel See It

Abstract

To assess newspaper coverage of the Canadian health system, thirty-four U.S. and Canadian health policy experts rated the neutrality of the headlines drawn from all major news stories in The New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) during a five-year period, excluding opinion pieces and editorials. Coverage of the Canadian health system by the WSJ and NYT was judged as overwhelmingly negative by our sample of policy experts. But the judgments of some of them differed depending on whether they were Canadian or American. Canadian experts were more likely than those from the United States to assess coverage as negative, especially for NYT articles. Conversely, U.S. policy experts more frequently judged NYT headlines as favorable, relative to their Canadian counterparts. Experts' reactions to newspaper coverage of the Canadian health system appear to depend on national identity to some extent. Possible explanations for press negativity are examined.