Does the news reflect what we die from?
1 To answer this, Shen and his team compared four key sources of data:
For each source the authors calculated the relative share of deaths, share of Google searches, and share of media coverage. And journalists can do much better in providing context of the broader trends: if reporting on a homicide, for example, include context of how homicide rates are changing over time.6 As media consumers we can be much more aware of the fact that relying on the 24/7 news coverage alone is wholly insufficient for understanding the state of the world. For those who are interested, you can find some discussion as a footnote.7
Shares of deaths, media coverage and Google searches over time
The interactive charts below present the full annual data series published by Shen et al. (2018), and summarised above, on the relative share of deaths in the US, Google searches and New York Times (NYT) and The Guardian media coverage across the 13 cause of death categories.
Source: ourworldindata.org