Midwives in the media: the portrayal of health professionals and childbirth in selected New Zealand magazines 1990-2000

Abstract

In this study, discourse analysis is used to examine selected articles from New Zealand popular magazines in order to explore the media representations of midwives and doctors (obstetricians and general practitioners) who provide maternity care. There has been much change surrounding the provision of maternity care in New Zealand over the past thirty years and especially since the introduction of the Nurses Amendment Act 1990. There has also been significant media interest in birthing and maternity care issues and the aim of this study is to consider some of the ways in which midwives and doctors are represented in the media. The way in which these representations are constructed in relation to safety issues is central to this study. The articles that were analysed were diverse and ranged from specific individual tragedy stories to more general consideration of maternity care provision and the 'politics of childbirth.' The types of stories that appeared as well as the main themes that were discussed throughout the articles were identified. The ways in which midwives and doctors were described by the journalists and the ways in which midwives and doctors discussed each other in relation to particular themes, were analysed in order to assess the media representations of midwives and doctors. Due to wide variations in the representations of midwives and doctors within the articles, and the complexity of the issues being discussed, definitive conclusions about overall media representations of midwives and doctors are difficult to draw. On one hand, the midwifery discourse attempted to portray midwives as being the 'specialists in normal birth' and as competent and safe professionals while doctors were portrayed as being overly controlling and introducing unnecessary medical intervention into childbirth (although there was some recognition of the value of obstetricians' skills). On the other hand, the medical discourse tended to associate independent midwifery with lack of safety and the dangers of non-medicalised childbirth were emphasized. Although in most of the articles both the midwifery and the medical perspective were presented, medical perspectives on the whole received more coverage and, in some articles were explicitly dominant. Doctors' views on safety and claims around the need for medical input in childbirth appeared to receive more attention within the articles than the evidence from research (which was presented in some depth in only one of the articles) which points to the very good safety record of midwifery care. The analyses presented in this study suggest that the media supports the medical discourse through emphasizing doctors' views about safety and presents an image of midwifery care as being unsafe. This has implications in relation to general perceptions about midwifery care and also for individual decisions about maternity care provision.