Stephen J. Porth

Big Pharma takes a fresh licking in our latest audit of US press coverage of business and policy issues.

Our annual press audit finds that the big news in 2011 for pharma was ... no news.

Negative views regarding pharma are on the rise, but vaccines help keep the focus on the positives of innovation

Pricing, promotion, and the unfinished story of healthcare reform dominated the news last year.

Reporters pass on the typical litany of lightning-rod issues and instead devote more than three-quarters of all coverage in 2008 to drug safety—and the regulators who enforce it.

Pharma gets less ink as news reporters shift their sights to other topics? That's a good thing--Isn't it?

And while reporters aren't writing any more about the industry, the topics they cover are a moving target.

The good news is that America's top newspapers were fairer to pharma in 2006. But coverage remains largely negative—and the hot topics are catching the industry by suprise.

The majority of headlines opposed the industry: 57.1 percent were negative, 18.1 percent were positive, and 24.8 percent were neutral. But the headlines were less negative than the stories themselves.