Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
There’s been some media attention given to my HealthNewsReview.org Publisher’s Note, “Network TV morning health news segments may be harmful to your health.”
Journalist Alison Bass blogged about it, asking “Is the financial meltdown of the media becoming a public health threat?”
As noted earlier, Susan Perry, in her MinnPost.com column, called HealthNewsReview.org “indispensable for health consumers as well as health journalists” -
On the most-read journalism blog – Romenesko Media News – the link read “Morning news shows get an ‘F’ for health coverage.”
The Association of Health Care Journalists’ “Covering Health” blog headlined it: “Morning shows’ health news called dangerous.”
And I did interviews with the New York Post and with KSTP radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul.
In the KSTP interview I described feeling a bit like Howard Beale, crazed anchor on the movie, “Network.” Like him, when I think about the schlock that appears on the networks’ morning TV health shows, I just want to say:
“I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE.”
Treatment for advanced ovarian tumors may lengthen survival, but questions still remain, despite the story’s emphasis on “promising” and “new hope.”
As with the HealthDay story on this research that we reviewed, readers of this story get a good dose of caveats and cautions along with the suggestions that electrical brain stimulation might someday “have implications” for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The readers of this story and the other one we reviewed by Reuters are likely to understand that electrical brain stimulation could have some memory effects, but it’s a long way from becoming a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
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