Framing Prevention in California: Lessons from Past Efforts to Raise Revenues
When it comes to prevention, the question isn't what works, the question is: how can we pay for what we know will create healthy environments? With Prevention Institute, BMSG examined whether past efforts to raise revenues in the realms of alcohol, tobacco, and lead paint might hold promise in the realm of food and activity. This report presents six case studies of those efforts and an analysis of news coverage of three California attempts to raise taxes or attach a fee to junk food or soda. [download pdf]
Provoking Thought, Changing
Talk: Discussing Inequality
The Social Equity and Opportunity
Forum at Portland State University , begun by BMSG founding
director Larry Wallack, has launched an occasional paper series, “You Can Get There From Here.” In the inaugural issue, Joe
Grady and Axel Aubrun of Cultural Logic discuss the difficulties inherent in
talking about inequality. BMSG director Lori Dorfman and Larry Wallack
offer a commentary, “Provoking Thought, Changing Talk: Putting it
into Practice.” [download pdf]
Interactive Food
& Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital
Age The Proliferation of the media in children's lives has
created a new "marketing ecosystem" that encompasses cell
phones, mobile music devices, instant messaging, videogames, and virtual
three-dimensional worlds. This report by Jeff Chester from the Center
for Digital Democracy and Kathryn Montgomery from American University
describes new marketing practices that are fundamentally transforming
how food and beverage companies do business with young people in the
twenty-first century.[download 8 page brief pdf][download 98 page full report pdf] [see examples,
news coverage, and statements from Marion Nestle, Kelly Brownell, the
Strategic Alliance, Senator Tom Harkin, and Congressman Edward J. Markey
at [digitalads.org]
Fighting Junk Food Marketing
to Kids by Berkeley Media Studies Group
With
support from the The California Endowment, BMSG developed a toolkit and
accompanying DVD so neighborhood residents, parents, teachers and young
people themselves can confront food and beverage marketing that
interferes with creating healthy eating environments in their
neighborhoods. Watch streaming video in English or Spanish that
accompanies the toolkit and vividly illustrates the problem and what
local groups can do about it. [download English toolkit pdf][download
Spanish toolkit pdf] .
Paquete de herramientas "Luchemos Contra la Promoción de Alimentos Chatarra
entre los Niños" está disponible en Español
[transferir paquete de herramientas en Español pdf]
Accelerating Policy on Nutrition: Lessons from
Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms, and Traffic Safety by Berkeley
Media Studies Group With support from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation and The California Endowment, BMSG convened researchers and
advocates with years of experience in various public health issues and
asked: what can we learn from your field that would apply to nutrition?
In Accelerating Policy on Nutrition you'll
see that they had a lot to tell us. [download pdf]
Making the Case for Early
Care and Education: A Message Development Guide for Advocates
by Berkeley Media Studies Group
With support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, BMSG convened
advocates around the country and hired EDK Associates to help us develop
fresh language for making the case for local, state, and federal child
care policy. The book reveals a hierarchy of messages in support of
early care and education, shows how to use them in different contexts,
and explains why some of the messages work better than others. [download pdf]
Voices
for Change: A Taxonomy of Public Communications Campaigns and Their
Evaluation Challenges
by Berkeley Media Studies Group
The Communications Consortium Media Center in Washington DC commissioned
this paper as part of a collaborative project designed to research,
develop, test, and disseminate principles for evaluating nonprofit
communications. The paper profiles various strategic communication
campaigns that differ in purpose, scope, and maturity to identify the
evaluation challenges each presents in its messy real-world context. [download pdf]
Bucking Tobacco
Sponsorship at Rodeos: Strategies for Media Advocacy and Public
Engagement
by Berkeley Media Studies Group & Public Media Center
We developed a media advocacy plan to counter the aggressive marketing
by the tobacco industry at family sporting events, and to shift the
focus from current arguments that frame tobacco marketing as a
children's issue back to an issue of irresponsible industry marketing.
[download pdf]
Reporting on Violence: A
Handbook for Journalists
by Jane Ellen Stevens
This reporter's tool offers data, resources and suggestions on how to
develop data-driven crime and violence stories. We have distributed
nearly 1,000 copies to reporters and others in more than 131 news media
outlets, journalism programs or affiliated organizations in California
and across the country. [view an online version]
Reporting on Violence: New Ideas for Television, Print, and Web
by Jane Ellen Stevens
This second edition of the handbook applies the same concepts to local
TV news and multimedia reporting. It includes case studies on youth
violence and intimate partner violence, with examples from innovative
reporting at the San Jose Mercury News. [download pdf]
Reporting on Violence Instructor's Guide
by Jane Ellen Stevens, Esther Thorson and Lori Dorfman
This book provides an eight-week course for journalism students on how
to include a public health perspective in crime and violence reporting,
including lesson plans, lectures, class exercises and homework
assignments. [download
pdf]
Health & Safety Prototype Web Site
This prototype provides a model for how news organizations can use a Web
"shell" to incorporate breaking news about violence with context and
continuity into their own site focused on local health and safety. [learn about Web shells] [view the Health
& Safety Prototype Site]
The following three papers were prepared for "Strengthening the Public
Health Debate on Handguns, Crime, and
Safety," a meeting convened by BMSG in Chicago, Illinois, with support
from The Joyce
Foundation:
The Gun Control Movement has Found Its Voice:
But Still Needs to Find Its Way
by Ethel Klein, EDK Associates, New York
The majority of Americans that favors stricter gun laws is silent no
more. They are telling newscasters, pollsters, and politicians that they
want something done to end the ease with which people can get guns. In
October 1999, BMSG commissioned a paper from public opinion researcher
Ethel Klein that tells the story of U.S. opinion on guns. Dr. Klein
traces the trajectory of public opinion on guns and makes
recommendations for violence prevention advocates who want to amplify
the public's voice on this issue. [download pdf]
Myths about Defensive Gun Use and Permissive
Gun Carry Laws
by Daniel Webster, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD & Jens
Ludwig, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Some researchers have argued that communities are safer when more
residents carry guns. But are they? Daniel Webster and Jens Ludwig
examine the evidence put forth in various studies by John Lott and Gary
Kleck to assess the question. Until proven otherwise, they write, the
best science indicates that more guns will lead to more deaths. [download pdf]
Gun
Policy in Seven Midwestern States: A Brief Analysis
by Eric Gorovitz & Vincent Ferri, The Bell Campaign, San Francisco,
CA
Gorovitz and Ferri explore gun laws in seven states: Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. These states, whose laws
vary from unusually restrictive to remarkably permissive, present a host
of challenges and opportunities for gun violence prevention advocates.
[download pdf]
An Analysis of Three Strikes in California
Newspapers: September 1993-March 1994
by Liana Winett and Lawrence Wallack, August 1994.
Late in 1993, a debate raged in California on how to quell the rising
crime rate. "Three Strikes and You're Out" legislation was the solution
championed by Governor Pete Wilson, who capitalized on high-visibility
violence such as the Polly Klaas murder to muster support for his law.
This framing memo analyzes the debate over "Three Strikes" in more than
100 articles from 38 newspapers across the state. [contact us for a copy]
