Volume 197 - Issue 6
A journalist’s view of reporting medical tests
Author: Julie C Robotham
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (6): 327. || doi: 10.5694/mja12.10683
Published online: 17 September 2012
Published online: 17 September 2012
Reporters need to balance real-world writing pressures against idealised reporting standards. When doctors and academics critique mainstream media health coverage, they typically suggest that this is to educate reporters about their failings, and/or to sound the alert generally about the media’s tendency to mislead a naive public into believing dangerous falsehoods about risks of disease, side effects of medicines, miracle cures and so on.
The article by ...
Reporters need to balance real-world writing pressures against idealised reporting standards
When doctors and academics critique mainstream media health coverage, they typically suggest that this is to educate reporters about their failings, and/or to sound the alert generally about the media’s tendency to mislead a naive public into believing dangerous falsehoods about risks of disease, side effects of medicines, miracle cures and so on.
The article by Wilson and colleagues in this issue of the Journal uses both justifications, and in doing so, makes assumptions about the role of health news journalism and the responses of readers that merit closer consideration.1
The article assumes that the goals of journalists are or should be the same as those of public health professionals (“as the general media are important sources of health information for consumers, accurate and balanced reporting is essential”).
Responsible reporters take seriously the impact of their words on patients or potential patients. But there are many occasions when the media may legitimately see its role in health reporting as to stimulate debate, to hold companies or governments accountable, or a range of other functions not necessarily concerned with public health education.
Accuracy and balance are in the eye of the beholder. The priorities of the public may clash with those of prominent medical groups. Sincere and well qualified scientists may hold opposing opinions on some questions. Journalists have to navigate those disagreements and not be beholden to dominant points of view.
The authors further assume that there is a definitive standard by which any health news story may be judged, but they largely disregard how this is to be managed amid journalists’ twin limitations of space and time.
To include all nine questions that Wilson and colleagues ask journalists to consider would make for a long story — in my estimate, at least 500 words. This is unrealistic. Often a print journalist will have half that much space. Journalists are skilled at determining which points to leave aside; this triaging of information is one of our main tasks.
Reports on early-stage scientific findings fare particularly poorly by the standards of the authors’ suggested list of questions. Such reports may not mention price or relative performance compared with existing tests or treatments: how can they, if the technology is still in the lab? Context is everything, and can signal to readers whether an innovation could change their life overnight, or is merely a glimpse of a possible future.
The media landscape is changing. Two of Australia’s biggest news organisations, Fairfax Media and News Corporation, recently announced cost-saving programs that will result in significant job losses among journalists. It is hard to imagine that this will not reduce capacity in specialist beats such as health, in which reporters become familiar with the conventions and caveats of scientific discovery through experience.
Meanwhile, the pace of news is accelerating. Daily deadlines are giving way to constant updates via the internet, and individual news items, often very brief, are becoming a transient commodity. In this environment, the opportunity to invite and include independent comment and for rigorous vetting of stories — particularly those sourced from overseas agencies — can be diminished.
These issues that health reporters must consider do not excuse genuinely substandard material, but instead emphasise that the ideal world the authors appear to wish for does not exist now, and is unlikely to materialise any time soon.
Structured quality analyses of mainstream health news have become mainstays of the medical literature. If they are to provide a valuable contribution, it is time for those who judge them to acknowledge that the mainstream media is an industry whose intentions and constraints are very different from those of the medical establishment.
Competing interests
I hold shares in and was employed by Fairfax Media, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, at the time of writing. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of any employer.
References
- Wilson AJ, Robertson J, Ewals BD, Henry D. What the public learns about screening and diagnostic tests through the media. Med J Aust 2012; 197: 324-326. 0_CHDBGFFB
Provenance: Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.