Introduction

Background and methodology

 This analysis was conducted as part of the international project ²Addicted to life”, launched in 2009. As was specified in the project description, our task was not to carry out media monitoring in a traditional sense by reviewing all the drug-related articles published within a given period, but to monitor articles in 10 media outlets in a pre-defined period of 15 November – 15 December 2009. From the daily newspapers we selected Népszabadság, Magyar Nemzet and Blikk; the weeklies we monitored included Magyar Narancs, Heti Válasz, and Heti Világgazdaság. As to the online journals, Index and Origo were chosen, and we also monitored two TV channels: Channel 1 of the Hungarian Public Television (MTV1) and a commercial channel, RTL Klub.

 In the studied period we found only one drug-related article in one of the 2 weeklies (Heti Válasz) – it is evident that we cannot draw far-reaching conclusions about the frequency of such articles in weeklies based on four issues only. In addition, we are aware that some of these papers (e.g. Magyar Narancs) published articles related to drug issues in the autumn and at the end of 2009, which however fell outside the timeframe.