News Coverage of Health and Political Conflict in Venezuela

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In Venezuela, news coverage on television and in newspapers devotes a great deal of space to health issues, and there are specialized health reporters on many of the leading newspapers. In over more than a decade of research, we found that news coverage of health came to play a major role in the politics of race, class, and citizenship in Venezuela at several crucial junctures. Our work has focused in particular on three areas.

• Media coverage of a cholera epidemic in Venezuela, 1991-1993; research centered on the national press and Notidiario, the regional newspaper of Delta Amacuro State
• Media coverage of health from 2002 through the present
• Debates regarding health issues in the Bolivarian Revolution between the government of President Hugo Chávez Frías and the opposition