Media's pH (Public Health) Value

The campaign aims to end "quiet and polite" expert-led tobacco control approaches in India and other developing tobacco marketplaces and begin a more "inconvenient" "in-your-face" industry approach - which uses investigative reporting to "raise awareness, ignite and channel public outrage, catalyse demand for bolder action, and demonstrate media's public health value." For example, ten years after India enacted new tobacco legislation in 2003 - signing the FCTC the same year - there is no independent and comprehensive study on tobacco industry activities in the world's largest free market economy - India.

The campaign's online presence includes a Facebook page containing links to Indian press coverage for the campaign, editorials, and informational materials and videos, including, for example, a documentary "Secrets of the Tobacco Industry", a WHO report on the Indian film industry and tobacco called: "Bollywood: Victim or Ally? A WHO study on the portrayal of tobacco in Indian Cinema", and a Supreme Court decision on banning tobacco advertising. It includes the image above by S.Siva Saravanan of students of Hindusthan College of Arts and Science forming a human chain to display the words "No Smoking" as part of the anti-smoking awareness day organised by the college.

A two-part blog/editorial is also available on the Newslaundry website here and here.

Tobacco, Health

As stated by the campaign organisers in Newslaundry: "Journalism and public health are public goods and journalists are key contributors to people’s health literacy (the ability to access, assess and use information for health). Poor health literacy is associated with poor health choices, increased illnesses, higher health costs and death. Health literacy is one of the strongest predictors of health along with age, gender, ethnicity, income and empowerment. Paradoxically, journalism training does not often focus on public health, and the study of public health gives low priority to the role of journalists as public health educators and informers. WTY aims to address this paradox by raising the health literacy of journalists and an awareness of their roles and their responsibilities to raise health literacy of others...."