We have drawn information on news frames from Blowing Away The Smoke, Advisory # 6, "Framing for Content: Shaping the Debate on Tobacco", by Lori Dorfman. (www.strategyguides.globalink.org/guide07.htm)

News Frames

"Frames" are the boundaries around a news story. Just as you decide what to include when you take a photograph, journalists decide what to include in a story. "Framing" describes the journalist's selection process—which issues, ideas, and images should appear in a news story. The news frame draws attention to specific parts of the picture, relegates other elements to the background, and leaves out some aspects entirely.

Take, for example, a TV story about teenage smoking. It is far too likely to be framed as an illustration of typical teen-age rebellion, rather than as a story about the seduction of vulnerable teenagers by sophisticated cigarette advertising.

Framing can also refer to the attitude or perspective the writer takes toward what is included in the story. This is often referred to as the "angle" or "spin" on the story. To understand how writers frame stories—and to frame stories ourselves—we need to pay attention to symbols, metaphors, or visual aids that evoke particular meanings.

Advocates gained support for tobacco control in Bangladesh by framing the issue as one of poverty. They conducted research and publicized the results, for example, in "Hungry for Tobacco: An Analysis of the Economic Impact of Tobacco on the Poor in Bangladesh," by Debra Efroymson, Saifuddin Ahmed, and Joy Townsend (Tobacco Control 10 (2001): 212-217). They chose to focus on the number of malnourished children who could be saved by redirecting spending from tobacco to food. Framing their story in this way, advocates succeeded in interesting groups who had felt tobacco was a low priority in a country with so many other serious health problems. The research caught the attention of the media, NGOs, and even the prime minister.

Why News Frames Are Important to Advocates

How the news frames an issue helps its audience decide who is responsible for the cause and solution of a problem. How the media chooses to frame the tobacco control movement and the tobacco industry influences many citizens who are not as engaged in the issues as we are.

"Media-effects" research shows that TV news viewers typically place responsibility for fixing a problem on the people depicted as having that problem. This is a concern for public health advocates, because the usual frame in TV news emphasizes isolated events or people and minimizes the larger social and physical landscape.

For example, suppose viewers see teenagers buying cigarettes from vending machines or smoking in shopping malls. Research tells us that most viewers will focus on the irresponsibility of teenagers—not on the tobacco products or its marketers. But suppose instead a national TV news program shows teenagers smoking to illustrate a true story: a former cigarette-company advertising creator who tried to make smoking attractive to all young people. The audience is then more likely to view the tobacco industry's advertising practices as a cause of teenage smoking.

Public Health Frames

When people view tobacco primarily as a personal issue, they "blame the victim." They see the individual both as the cause of the problem and as responsible for finding a remedy. In this view, people who use tobacco have made a bad decision and have no willpower. They are morally responsible as a result. This view largely ignores the behavior of tobacco executives and government regulators, since smokers are exercising "free choice."

By contrast, the public health frame shows tobacco use as a social and political issue. The primary focus is on the behavior of the tobacco companies and the policy makers, rather than the individual smoker. The goals then become, for instance, eliminating advertising that encourages tobacco use, and protecting nonsmokers from secondhand smoke.

The function of the public health frame is to highlight governmental and corporate accountability to build support for necessary policy solutions.

How to Use Public Health Frames

Advocates can take several concrete steps to make the public health perspective resonate in their news stories.

Translate the individual problem into a social issue.

The public health frame should emphasize social determinants and the policies that can change them rather than individual choices. This means talking about policies, not behavior. The change in language from "smoking" to "tobacco" demonstrates this shift. "Smoking" is an act performed by an individual; "tobacco" is a product that is manufactured, marketed, and regulated. The language you use must always demonstrate that there is a larger environment in which people are trying to make healthy decisions. What barriers limit their options related to health? What elements of the environment could support them? Illustrating the answers to these questions would help journalists and their audiences understand the importance of addressing solutions that go beyond help for individual smokers.

Assign primary responsibility.

Without information from us, most news consumers assume that the smoker—the person with the problem—is responsible for solving it. If a television show depicts teenagers smoking, then most viewers will consider the teenagers irresponsible. If we want audiences to understand the public health perspective on problems, we must constantly assert the corporate, governmental, or institutional responsibility for those problems. This means we talk about "the tobacco companies and those who regulate them," rather than about "smokers." We need to name the individual or body whom we hold responsible for taking action.

Suppose we want to convey the issue of fairness, for example. We can first develop a story that personalizes the injustice taking place. Then we can provide a clear picture of who benefits from the situation. We now have a story about an exploiter and the exploited. Tobacco control advocates have been very effective in creating an image of powerful tobacco-company executives who exploit children and youth for profit. The key to advancing the social justice and fairness issue is to create a story that leads people to say: "That just isn't right. There ought to be a law."

Present a solution.

If someone asks you what needs to be done about smoking among kids, you should be prepared with a simple, effective answer. For example: "We need to raise the price of cigarettes through excise taxes or penalties on cigarettes.

Another example: "We need to raise the price of cigarettes through excise taxes or penalties on cigarettes, because research shows that the best way to reduce youth consumption of a product is to raise its price."

Or: "We need to enforce the new ordinance that bans billboards in the city. Those messages are reaching our kids." You do not list every possible solution. Rather, you highlight the one resolution that your group has given top priority—the one you believe must be advanced today. This means knowing what you want to say, and being able to say it simply. Practice with colleagues until the answers roll off your tongue.

In Bangladesh, for instance, an intensive media strategy by Work for a Better Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance has successfully changed the focus of media coverage from "how tobacco harms the health" to "we need strong laws and higher tobacco taxes."

Make a practical appeal.

The good news is that public health solutions are usually winners—from a practical as well as moral perspective. From a practical perspective, policy changes behavior more effectively than does education alone. A successful policy change is cost effective: It can reduce or eliminate the need for ongoing remedial programs. This is because the policy will likely address one of the basic causes of the problem, such as the availability of tobacco products, or regulating where smoking is permitted. So you should talk about how your solution will save money, enhance productivity, save lives, or protect children—protecting vulnerable "innocent" children is still a function of government that most people support. Have concrete examples of how your policy will benefit the entire community—not only those who suffer from the problem.

How to Counter the Tobacco Industry's "Frames"

As tobacco control advocates create and use media frames that will generate support for our policy objectives, we must overcome more than the preconceptions of journalists. We must also contend with the active propaganda efforts of the tobacco industry to frame tobacco control issues to support their negative advocacy.

Fortunately, tobacco control advocates have developed effective strategies for countering industry media-advocacy efforts. These strategies have been captured in two guides that tobacco control advocates around the world have found useful in their campaigns: Smoke Signals (www.strategyguides.globalink.org/guide10.htm) and Media Strategies for Smoking Control (www.strategyguides.globalink.org/guide09.htm).

Adapted from Smoke Signals (www.strategyguides.globalink.org/guide10.htm)

How to Use Media Bites

The successful media bite is one of the most challenging and creative tools for framing a news story to get your point across effectively.

What is a media bite? What does it mean to have an effective bite?

A "bite" is a single mouthful of food. A media bite, then, is a short (bite-sized) quote that reporters find so appealing and tasty they want to place it prominently in their stories.

To be truly effective, the media bite must combine the art of the poet with the soundness of science.

The best media bites solve three of the media advocate's greatest challenges:

• To be an effective simplifying concept for your policy objective
• To grab the attention of a journalist and gain "access" in a news story
• To help frame the issue in a way that points toward your policy objective

When you want your story to be in the news, you must work within the constraints of news time. Reporters usually develop their stories by conducting interviews with known sources—people familiar to them. As they begin to gather information, reporters may talk to you for background on an issue. These discussions may provide the reporter with direct quotes for their story. But usually reporters select quotes later, after they better understand the issue and know which of your words best represent a particular aspect of the story. At that point, media bites become extremely important. At the most, you can expect to be heard for 15 seconds in a TV story, or to appear for a few sentences in a print story. Despite the complexity of your issue, you must make it come alive for news consumers in short "bites."

Many overworked reporters lift quotes directly from press releases. So pay particular attention in your releases to framing your message in sharp, short quotes. For an example, look at: http://tobaccofreekids.org/Script/DisplayPressRelease.php3?Display=607

How do you come up with media bites? Practice with colleagues; try out different ways to describe the problem and convey your solution. Try to speak to the shared values of your society: Stress themes such as fairness, common sense, or protecting children. Talk about what is at stake. Who is affected? What will this mean to people's lives? Don't be afraid to take a stand. Successful media bites often convey some irony, sometimes comparing the public health problem to another issue people feel strongly about. Here are some examples.

From ways to build upon the legal and moral authority of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco-control, to insights into the "art" of tobacco control media advocacy, this guide offers advocacy lessons from one generation of tobacco control advocates to you, the next generation.

In the last 50 years, we advocates have faced as much failure and disappointment as triumph. But we have tried to learn equally from those failures and from our successes. We hope that you who now set out to develop new tobacco control advocacy plans and strategies will be able to avoid the costly and painful mistakes we made. We hope that the health and life of your nation will thus be spared much of the ravages of the tobacco pandemic that still afflicts us and threatens to afflict so many more. That will be your gift to us!