Newspaper media reporting of motor vehicle crashes in Singapore: an opportunity lost for injury prevention education?

Newspaper media advocacy can help steer public attention away from motor vehicle crash (MVC) injuries as a personal problem to that of a social and public health issue. If used properly, newspaper media is potentially a powerful mass educator on MVC prevention. However, there is often a conflict of interest in which newspapers, in an attempt to boost readership and revenue, may over-emphasize and sensationalize the human-interest aspect of an MVC story. The aim of this study is to examine newspaper articles of MVCs in Singapore to assess how our newspaper media coverage portray MVCs and identify factors that mitigate injury and educate the public on injury prevention measures. Details of the MVC were extracted from 12 months of newspaper coverage in Singapore. Two independent coders were used to establish inter-rater reliability. From 1 January to 31 December 2007, 201 articles about MVCs were published. About 74.1% of articles assigned blame to a particular road user, negligence on either road user was implied in 56.7% of articles, and road safety messages were mentioned in 8% of the articles. The mainstream communication tone used was positive for law enforcement (71.1%) and neutral towards injury prevention or road safety messages (89.1%). Newspaper media reporting of MVCs in Singapore generally does not include injury prevention messages or highlight injury-mitigating measures. This is a lost opportunity for public education. Collaboration between public health practitioners and newspaper media is required to address this issue.