Barriers of Health News Producers’ Empowerment: A Qualitative Study in Iran

Background: Studies show that raising news producers’ knowledge and skills are influential and necessary for promoting the quality of health news. This study aimed to investigate the barriers to implementing empowerment programs for news producers and to identify their respective solutions. Methods: In this qualitative content analysis the opinion of 14 journalists, one translator, 10 editors or editors-in-chief of health news agencies were gathered through 12 in-depth interviews and 4 focus group discussions. Purposive sampling was done and interviews continued up to the point of saturation. Data were analyzed with Open Code software. Results: The barriers to the implementation of empowerment programs were identified as: a) individual factors, b) deficiency of certain facilitators, and c) organizational and macro policymakings. Various solutions were suggested for the barriers respectively. Conclusion: The implementation of empowerment programs for news producers requires a system approach toward its determinant factors. This will be more likely if measures at other concerned levels are also taken. Creating incentives on behalf of the news-producing organizations can also contribute to this end and create a suitable context for news producers. Training and empowerment alone will not be sufficient.