Pitfalls in Medical News

An excellent essay in the New England Journal of Medicine by Susan Dentzer, formerly the health and medical correspondent with the News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Some excerpts...

Communicating Medical News — Pitfalls of Health Care Journalism
by Susan Dentzer

Is our job to describe the bigger picture, or simply to report what is "new"? Should we present black-and-white versions of reality that lend themselves to stark headlines, rather than grayer complexities that are harder to distill into simple truths?

The news media need to become more knowledgeable and to embrace more fully our role in delivering to the public accurate, complete, and balanced messages about health. With some additional skills, care, and introspection — and a change in priorities — we can produce coverage more in line with our responsibilities.

Some health care journalists will say their paramount role is to report the "news" — strictly speaking, that which is new. These journalists tend to cover the findings of a new clinical study without much, if any, reference to previous relevant studies.

More broadly, a problem that is worsening in this era of the 24/7 news cycle is the frequent failure to put new developments into any kind of reasonable context for readers or viewers. In this environment, reporters become little more than headline readers or conduct interviews that amount to a "hit and run" version of journalism.

Journalists sometimes feel the need to play carnival barkers, hyping a story to draw attention to it. This leads them to frame a story as new or different — depicting study results as counterintuitive or a break from the past — if they want it to be featured prominently or even accepted by an editor at all.

[Our profession] should require that health stories, rather than being rendered in black and white, use all the grays on the palette to paint a comprehensive picture of inevitably complex realties. Journalists could start by imposing on their work a "prudent reader or viewer" test: On the basis of my news account, what would a prudent person do or assume about a given medical intervention, and did I therefore succeed in delivering the best public health message possible?

When interviewed by journalists about a news development, such as a new study, they should offer to discuss the broader context, point reporters to any similar or contradictory studies, refer journalists to credible colleagues with differing perspectives, and mention any study limitations or caveats about the results, as well as any potential or real conflicts of interest among the study authors. It will take many expert hands to ensure that the health news the public reads really is fit to print.

Read the whole piece at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/1/1

Excellent points raised by Dentzer.

Here are the realities as I see it, working in local TV news.

• Time pressures, both deadline and report length. Assignments for the 4:00, 5:00, and 6:00 news are given at 10:00 a.m. In that time, some basic research needs to be done, interviews must be arranged and taped, and the report has to be written and assembled. On that kind of deadline, for a minute and a half of air, it may be feasible to mention one or two of the items in Dentzer's laundry list in the last paragraph above, but not all of them.

• What do viewers want? Painting a fuller picture with the shades of gray Dentzer refers to is indeed a laudable goal. But I get the sense that "gray" is confusing to viewers. Reports that I bolster with caveats, limitations, and contradiction end up getting a shoulder shrug and fade away into the ether. Stories that I spent less time on are the ones that viewers call about wanting more information. And believe me, the bosses know which stories viewers call in on. Pavlovian as we are in this business, it seems the simpler the better.

• Extinction of the specialty reporter. The dedicated health and medical reporter is a rare breed these days. The trend in the industry is to have a general assignment reporter do the health news. It puts pressure on specialty reporters to make it worth the station's while to have them on board, so they strive for a story that is "promotable." Otherwise it's curtains for them.

As Dentzer mentioned, priorities need to change, but the media have a culture unto themselves. Culture does not change quickly without a groundswell from the majority. I don't foresee a groundswell emanating from viewers en masse or from the dwindling numbers of specialty medical reporters out there.