Transcript Dr John Lister, Coventry University WHY DOES HEALTH JOURNALISM MATTER? Impact of health reporting  “Surveys continue to show that the vast majority of.

Dr John Lister, Coventry University
WHY DOES HEALTH JOURNALISM
MATTER?
Impact of health reporting
 “Surveys continue to show that the vast majority
of the public get most of their information about
science from the mass media.”
 Science and the Media Expert Group,
 January 2010
 Misinformation or inadequate information on
medical issues can kill
 MMR,
 If 70% of A&E attenders can be treated at Urgent Care
Centre – are you/your child in the 70% or 30%?
Health affects everyone
Almost no other news/specialist topic has such a
universal audience in all media. Story lines include:
 Reader’s own health
 Availability /affordability)
 Health care systems – changes, costs, Quality
 Keeping/getting healthy
 New treatments/effectiveness of treatments
Main sources of health news
 Mainstream media UK (end 2013). Estimates:
 >50 million daily readers of newspapers
 >14 million accessing newspaper info online
 Tens of millions in news audiences for TV & radio
 Compare with specialist health press
 <300,000 weekly readers of BMJ, Health Service
Journal, Nursing Standard, Nursing Times & more
specialist media combined
 Plus online readers – maybe 1.5-2 million monthly
– almost all health professionals & academics
Who is reporting on health?
 Surveys of health reporters show few have
any specialist training:
 and most of these trained as health professionals
or science degrees before becoming reporter
 Most specialist reporters centred in specialist
health trade press:

Tiny audience compared with mainstream media
 Few training courses in Europe, all small
 Few employers invest anything in training

As a result: self taught journalists, trying to cope
with complex stories & newsroom pressures
News values versus balance
 Mainstream news media approach stories as
NEWS, not from scientific interest.
 Nuances don’t fit well into this framework.
 Traditional news values (Galtung & Ruge):
 RELEVANCE for target audience (& NEWS)
 TIMELINESS (immediacy: happening now) = little
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time for checking, balance, or scientific critique
SIMPLIFICATION – can it be described simply?
ELITES: can story be linked to a famous person?
NEGATIVITY: bad news sells (simplify)
GOOD NEWS: also sells (simplify)
Reporting frames understanding
– and limits response
 Weaknesses in reporting not limited to reporting
clinical trials and medical innovation
 Misinformation can also disenfranchise
 If a story or an aspect of a story is not in the
media, public don’t know & cannot react
 Reporting of English health reforms, Obamacare
 Some stories achieve prominence, despite
centring on inaccurate information
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“13,000 excess deaths in failing hospitals”
‘Rise in GP support’ for charging for appointments
 A nuanced story to rectify an inaccurate report
will not reach same audience
Time to take POLICY seriously
 Various guidelines circulated on reporting
clinical trials, & campaigns waged (Goldacre,
BMJ, Lancet, etc):
 Gary Schwitzer/healthnewsreview – 10 points
 Science Media Centre – 10 points
 All seeking to ensure proper reporting of source,
context, cost, timescale and critique.
 Problems where these principles not applied:
 audience misled, false expectations
 unjustified panic where dangers exaggerated,
absolute risk not clearly defined.
Need to raise
bar on health
policy reports
• We need a similar
framework to
encourage critical
reporting of HEALTH
POLICY and other nonmedical stories
• This is my attempt at
developing Gary
Schwitzer’s ten points
for wider health
reporting
Think before you report
 No wish to tell journalists what to think or say
 But crucial to ensure that more thinking &
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critique are developed
Ways to critique rather than recycle endless
stream of press releases & PR-guided material
Ways to put stories in context – political, social,
economic – and find news stories that may
otherwise be missed.
Angles to explore the story – local, clinical,
practical, managerial, statistical, financial, etc.
Ways to bring in balancing voices
An ethical journalist must
be a critical journalist
 Ways to do the job better, with more satisfaction,
value added and possible feedback
 Without critical approach, journalist is simply
transmitting ethical approach of PR/ news source
 “Stenographer,” loudspeaker or messenger – not a
journalist offering any professional input
 Randolph Hearst
 “News is what people don’t want you to know:
everything else is advertising”
 Better health journalism benefits us all.