Examination of Baby Death and Abuse News Published in Newspaper

Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the baby deaths and abuse news published in the newspaper.

Methods: A retrospective descriptive study was carried out in January 2015. In this study, 10 newspapers were reviewed that these newspaper were published in between 01.01.2013 and 31.12.2014, their circulation were over 100.000, and accessible via of internet. Infant deaths and abuse reported in the numbers of these newspapers were screened using “infant mortality”, “baby and death”, “baby and violence” and “ baby of violence” keywords. This research was included 80 news which the news source of these was Turkey and related to the 0-12 month old baby. Data were collected with a data extraction tool developed to record the information in the news about the baby. Data were evaluated by the number and percent.

Results: In the number of newspapers examined talked about 88 babies in the 80 news. Fourth point ninety one percent of the infants in these news were 0-28 daily, 42.05% of the babies were girls, and 89.77% were dead. It was saw that the news made to related to abandonment of infants (31.82%), while health care (18.18%), sudden unexpected infant death (11.36%), traffic (9.09%) and household accidents (7.95%), parents’ murder / abuse (7.95%), mixed vaccine after death (2.27%), home births (1.14%), fever (1.14%) and other (9.09%). A lot of news had occurred in big cities.

Conclusion: This study revealed that most of the infants in the infant mortality and abuse news published in newspapers were in the neonatal period, abandonment, during health care, sudden unexpected infant. The protection and development of children’s health might be contributed by taking into account this information in the planning and servicing of health services