Is anyone responsible? the origins of personal responsibility rhetoric in news coverage of tobacco & obesity

The food and beverage industry's opposition to recent regulatory efforts is informed by the counter-regulatory “playbook” established by the tobacco industry, a key component of which was shifting responsibility to individual consumers. This study systematically explores the origins of the tobacco industry's personal responsibility arguments in the news, and its connection to rhetoric used by the food and beverage industry. We analyzed media coverage of the tobacco industry spanning 1966 to 1991, and compared it to an analysis of news coverage of the food and beverage industry from 2000 to 2011. Faced with calls for policy responses to health crises in which they are implicated, the tobacco industry responded by disputing the health harms caused by cigarettes, and by characterizing government regulation as intrusive. By contrast, food and beverage representatives primarily promoted their industry as a socially responsible actor. They also framed all of their arguments in the news in the context of personal responsibility - even those that did not explicitly refer to individual consumers. Both tobacco and food and beverage companies have successfully drawn on the deeply-held American value of personal responsibility to limit support for policies that could limit the reach of their respective products. The food and beverage industry's weaving of personal responsibility throughout all of its news frames is particularly invidious for obesity prevention advocates, because it reinforces subtle associations against intervening for the public's good that are more difficult to counter than the more explicit and isolated arguments used by the tobacco industry.