ABSTRACT
Public awareness and perception of health risks depend upon the accuracy of health information reports, the reputation of the source, and the way the information is conveyed. This study of the Financial Times’ coverage of the 1996 bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease” indicates how inaccuracies in British press reports heightened public fear in the early days of the crisis. The public reaction, in turn, caused the government to respond with very severe measures to control the disease. The Financial Times stated that the consequences of “the crisis of Bovine Spongiform Encephalo-pathy, or mad cow disease, are more cataclysmic…than the 1960s epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease, or the outbreak of salmonella and the Chernobyl radioactive fallout in the 1980s” (25 March, The culling of Britain’s cattle).
