The first part of a two-part, two-weekend interview appeared on Indiana Public Radio this weekend. The guest: me. The topic: health journalism.
Some good things are happening in health news coverage. Of the first 12 stories reviewed in 2009 on HealthNewsReview.org, five have received the top five-star score. In the three years of the project, there have never been so many highly-rated stories in such a sport span. In fact, only 13% of all 712 stories reviewed [...]
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has done it again. This tough “medium market” (if I can call it that) newspaper faces tough economic times by scrapping to do more tough journalism. Just two weeks ago we blogged about one of their stellar health journalism efforts. Yesterday they published a 1,700-word story (that’s rare these days) raising [...]
Of the first 710 stories reviewed on HealthNewsReview.org, only 88 – or 12% have received our top five-star score. But in one recent 8-day span, a record of four stories were given a five-star review by three independent reviewers – using the same ten standardized criteria we apply to all stories. Here are those four: [...]
The Milwaukee Journal – a paper facing all the struggles (and maybe some more) that any news organization faces – continues to shine through it all with its health news coverage. Reporter John Fauber has a two-part series this week on “doctors moonlighting for drug companies.” Excerpt: It’s a practice that increasingly is drawing criticism [...]
While I was on vacation last week, many web surfers found my name when searching for articles on Sanjay Gupta’s work after the announcement that he was being considered for the Surgeon General position. Because of a failure in search engine functioning, some surfers weren’t able to find what they were searching for and asked [...]
Can’t I just have a few days away without feeling the need to comment on health care/health journalism news? I’ve been away from the mainland for two days and now I hear that: 1. CNN’s Sanjay Gupta may be picked as Surgeon General. 2. One of the best health news bloggers in the U.S. – [...]
In this economy I don’t begrudge anyone’s ability to make a buck. There are companies that make a lot of bucks selling “breakthrough” TV health news segments to TV stations to fill air time. Presumably the stations don’t think they need their own fulltime health reporter, can’t afford to hire one, and/or find it cheaper [...]
Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs and health policy analyst for the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer has a commentary in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, “Communicating Medical News — Pitfalls of Health Care Journalism.” Excerpt: “In my view, we in the news media have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards [...]
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.
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