Media Coverage Trails Other Cancers.

• Position: Lung cancer not well covered - Brief Article

A study confirms long-held suspicions that lung cancer, the leading cancer killer of both men and women, is seriously underreported when compared to other major cancers. Of 600 randomly selected cancer stories that appeared between August, 1999, and July, 2000, 61% reported on breast cancer, 23% on prostate cancer, 17% on colorectal cancer, and nine percent focused on lung cancer outside of tobacco and smoking issues. This is especially significant since more Americans die each year of lung cancer than the combined deaths resulting from breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer.

The objective of the study was to evaluate the media coverage of the four major cancers, including volume and types of stories, topics addressed, and the impact of awareness events and celebrity outreach. It was commissioned by Cancer Care, the Oncology Nursing Society, and The Wellness Community and was developed in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute.

The study found that lung cancer coverage is overshadowed by tobacco-related issues. All together, there were 105 articles that mentioned lung cancer (about 17% of the coverage), but nearly half of these did so in the context of tobacco litigation and smoking issues, leaving 54 articles (nine percent) addressing lung cancer itself. This vastly differs from coverage of breast, prostate, and colon cancer, which focused mostly on treatment, research, and detection. For example, of 243 articles discussing treatment, nearly half were on breast cancer, 28% on prostate cancer, 16% on colorectal cancer, and just nine percent were related to lung cancer.

"Unfortunately, we were not surprised by these results," notes Diane Blum, executive director of the patient support group, Cancer Care, Inc. "We know that lung cancer is a deadly, yet preventable...