Here are two headlines on the same New England Journal of Medicine article this week, on a study from Johns Hopkins. The local paper – the Baltimore Sun – had the cheerleading headline: “Hopkins study supports use of CT scan of heart.” The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, had a quite different headline: [...]
All over the country, daily journalists working on newspapers or on radio or TV are now also being asked to publish blogs – often without any additional pay for the additional work. But I recently discovered a case where a reporter pressured to do a blog had that blog censored by a TV news director [...]
Few news stories gave a comprehensive picture of the findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine last week from the Jupiter study. This was the well-publicized study of the use of the C-reactive protein test (CRP) in “apparently healthy people” and the use of the drug rosuvastatin. This story presented a classic case [...]
“Anemic.” That’s what the Wall Street Journal Health Blog calls the fact that health news made up 3.6% of all the news content analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism over an 18-month period ending in June. One data point I locked into is this: Despite [...]
Earlier this year, when I published our data on our first two years’ experience on the HealthNewsReview.org project, I thought that surely leading U.S. journalism publications such as Columbia Journalism Review or American Journalism Review would be interested in some kind of summary. Wrong. Not a word of interest. But internationally, journalism bloggers from several [...]
Capping quite a week in criticism of health-medical-science journalism (see my two previous posts), Slate offers a column, “Bullies Like Bullying: How did a nonstory based on an iffy study end up in a New York Times blog?” Daniel Engber’s column targets the work of New York Times health blogger Tara Parker-Pope. Excerpts: “Last Wednesday, [...]
In the BMJ this week, Steve Woloshin, Lisa Schwartz and Ray Moynihan raise new questions about “who’s watching the watchdogs?” Excerpts: “Industry sponsorship of training and further education of journalists now occurs in a variety of contexts—universities, conferences, and professional associations—raising similar concerns to those that apply to education of doctors. The University of North [...]
Cris Russell has a column under the headline above in the Columbia Journalism Review. Excerpts: “A dirty little secret of journalism has always been the degree to which some reporters rely on press releases and public relations offices as sources for stories. But recent newsroom cutbacks and increased pressure to churn out online news have [...]
I’ve been tracking news coverage of a Minnesota company’s heart “sock” device for heart failure for four years. Four years ago, I questioned Star Tribune coverage. Two years ago, questions of evidence started to surface. Today the Star Tribune reports: “The high-profile consumer advocacy group Public Citizen expressed “deep concern” this week about whether the [...]
You can split hairs all you want about what the Associated Press actually reported about an American living in Germany who was treated with a bone marrow transplant for his leukemia, a treatment now being reported to have had an impact on his HIV/AIDS status. But these words were used: “Doctors say marrow transplant may [...]
We look for more critical analysis of FDA expedited approval of a new drug like this.
Five-star story on small study that tries to counter large body of evidence on soy supplements for hot flashes.
Our reviewers, including a leading women’s health clinician-researcher, felt this piece would have been benefited from more data and context.
We will not display your name or e-mail address on the site, nor will we share youre-mail address with any third parties.
For site updates and news from Gary, find us on Twitter:
HealthNewsReview: @HealthNewsRevu
Gary Schwitzer: @garyschwitzer
Copyright © 2012 Health News Review
