Reporting on Antibiotic Resistance in Two US Newspapers Before and During Covid-19.

Antibiotic resistance (AR) is a growing health crisis that has remained underrepresented in coverage across major news publications in the U.S. despite increasing rates of related disease outbreaks and mortality worldwide. This study used content analysis to examine the coverage of AR in two major U.S. news publications before the COVID-19 pandemic (2018-2019) and during it (2020-2021). Coverage of AR in The New York Times (NYT) and The Washington Post (WP) was analyzed according to the use of frames, the quantity of articles published, and a number of other variables including stakeholders, diseases, and terms referring to AR. These factors were used to assess how coverage of AR differed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it differed between the two newspapers. Pre-COVID-19 coverage focused on AR as an isolated pandemic, while coverage during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic often used AR as a supplementary component of the coverage to the main topic of COVID-19. This study found that both before and during the outbreak of COVID-19, the majority of the observed articles did not fully explain the scope, severity, or solution for the AR crisis. Instead, they provided readers with baseline information, framing AR as a contemporary issue and generally encouraging action but included very few tangible suggestions for every day, individual action for readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]