Study Chides Weekly Reader's Tobacco Coverage

By Jessica Portner

Weekly Reader , one of the country's most popular newsmagazines for children, may be presenting a cloudy message to young people about cigarette smoking, a new study says.

Health researchers at the University of California at San Francisco evaluated tobacco-related articles published between 1989 and 1994 in 34 issues of Weekly Reader and 28 editions of the competing weekly, Scholastic News.

The researchers found that Weekly Reader was "significantly more likely" to represent the tobacco industry's perspectives in its articles on smoking and tobacco use: 68 percent of Weekly Reader 's stories included the industry's views, compared with 32 percent of the articles in Scholastic News. Thirty-eight percent of Weekly Reader 's articles contained a clear no-smoking message, while 79 percent of the stories in Scholastic News contained...