Vaccination in the News: Newspaper Coverage 1915-22

The newspapers I focused my research on are: Bisbee Daily (Bisbee, Arizona), The Evening Herald (Klamath Falls, Oregon), The Evening World (New York, New York), The Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.), The Commoner (Lincoln, Nebraska), The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois), The Corpus Christi Caller (Corpus Christ, Texas) and The Public Ledger (Maysville, Kentucky). I attempted to pick a wide range of newspapers that represented rural and city areas. The newspapers had to have a large amount of articles from 1915 to 1922 that mentioned vaccine or vaccination. Also the newspapers had to be published daily but I made an exception with the regards to The Commoner because it provided great insight into the time period. After evaluation of these newspapers six arguments became apparent. The arguments are as follow: distrust in the medical community, vaccinations contaminate the body, compulsory vaccination, effects of disease, vaccinations are beneficial and finally vaccinations prevent natural selection.