Coverage of beverage alcohol issues in the print media in the United States, 1985-1991

Objectives. This study assessed the portrayal of alcohol-related issues in the print media in the United States during the 7-year period bracketing im plementation of the US alcohol warning label act in November 1988. Methods. All articles that appeared from 1985 to 1991 in 5 national newspap ers and that were indexed as dealing with beverage alcohol were identified. Content analysis of a 15% sample of these articles allowed an in-depth ass essment of the conceptualization of alcohol in the US print media. Results. A slight decrease in articles related to alcoholism was offset by an increase in articles about the more general health-related effects of al cohol. The warning label act received little attention. Most articles portr ayed alcohol neutrally or negatively, using information from government sou rces. Conclusions. Portrayal of alcohol in the US print media has changed in rece nt decades. A general shift noted as early as the 1960s has increasingly em phasized public health issues and deemphasized clinical aspects of alcoholi sm. This has been accompanied by a continuing shift away from a biopsycholo gical definition of alcohol-related behavior to a definition stressing exte rnal environmental factors.