The Grade the News (GTN) website reports on the questionable medical “reporting� done by syndicated TV and radio celebrity Dr. Dean Edell, who calls himself “America’s Doctor.�

Edell appears on San Francisco’s KGO Channel 7 with introductions that often say, “Dr. Dean Edell reports.� But the story points out that Edell does no original reporting in many of the stories.

GTN reports: “Many of his TV stories, along with transcripts under his byline on the KGO Web site, were taken nearly verbatim from a low-profile news service in Florida that mails out prepackaged video reports to more than 100 TV stations across the country.

The company, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, allows local reporters to put their names on stories they didn't report, film or write -- without mentioning Ivanhoe. Stations also are permitted to omit geographical information, giving viewers the false impression that the stories were locally produced and the patients and doctors quoted in the stories could be their neighbors.�

Edell doesn’t practice what he has preached, according to GTN: “In his writing and in news stories on television, Dr. Edell has condemned the unattributed use of video news releases -- ready-to-run stories produced by companies or government agencies looking for publicity.

In an opinion piece he wrote for the Knight Ridder news service in 1997, ‘Beware the Television Report of 'Important Medical Breakthrough,' ‘ Dr. Edell scolded health journalists ‘faced with shrinking budgets and staffs, pressure to produce more segments, and shorter deadlines’ who succumb to self-interested parties pushing ‘pre-packaged video tape complete with ready-made scripts.’ “

It’s worth noting that the main product of Ivanhoe – the company from which Edell’s station buys ready-made news – is called “Medical Breakthroughs.� But he was correct in his 1997 warning: this kind of "just-add-water" TV health reporting is proliferating.

Katie Couric and the NBC Today Show are at it again, with a weeklong series entitled "Confronting Colon Cancer," and a subtheme of "The Fight For More Screening."

I heard today's segment and do not yet have access to a transcript. But what I heard was a confusing jumble of recommendations - some of which included references to recommendations for screening everyone - and how cost-effective that could be. The CDC's Julie Gerberding talked about "evidence-based" recommendations on the same segment.

The fact is that there is NO evidence-based recommendation for screening the entire population before age 50. Evidence-based guidelines state that high risk individuals may derive benefit from screening before age 50, but there is no such recommendation for the general public.

Sorry I've been a little slow with posts in the past few days.

First, there's digging out from under a foot of new snow in the Twin Cities.

Second, there's digging out from under an avalanche of cardiology-related news coming out of the American College of Cardiology meeting.

It reminds me of the excellent paper by Woloshin and Schwartz in JAMA a few years ago, "Media Coverage of Scientific Meetings: Too Much, Too Soon?". Their conclusion: "Abstracts at scientific meetings receive substantial attention in the high-profile media. A substantial number of the studies remain unpublished, precluding evaluation in the scientific community."

A study in this month's American Journal of Managed Care (not to be published online until next week) confirms some of what I've reported in earlier studies: local TV health news is troublesome. (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story on the study.)

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed one month of news coverage on 122 stations in the nation's top 50 media markets.

A Michigan news release states that: "The average story was 33 seconds long, and most did not give specifics about the source of the information presented. Items about specific diseases tended not to contain recommendations for viewers, or information about how common the disease was - which could help put the news into perspective with other health issues. But most disturbing, the study's authors say, were the egregious errors contained in a small minority of studies - errors that could have led to serious consequences."

One author said, "The fact that one of the most-covered stories in the study was about the removal of warts using duct tape, a topic which has questionable public health value, and that the story originated in a press release from a renowned medical journal, shows that we in the health community have work to do."

CJRDaily.org features an interview with Wall Street Journal health columnist Tara Parker-Pope. The interview focuses on her opinion that "a flawed communications effort led to widespread misinterpretation of results by the news media and the public" regarding the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and its findings on how low-fat diets, consumption of calcium and vitamin D, and hormone replacement therapy affect women's health.

In the interview Parker-Pope says, "I also think that as reporters, we should never take anything at face value. I think a mistake that a lot of people might make is to read the press release. I almost never read the press release. I read the study first, because I don't want to be swayed by what the press release says. That's what you have to do with any kind of scientific research -- ask what is really being asked here, and how much is really being answered?"

She also says that science doesn't work in soundbites. "But I also think just because we have 15 seconds or 800 words or whatever the amount of time we have to tell our story, we still have to get it right. It's challenging but it's also what's kind of fun about being a health writer -- taking this really technical, complicated stuff and distilling it down into something that people can understand and use to make decisions about their health."

I'm part of a team that has been working for months on a system to evaluate and grade U.S. health news coverage of clinical research. A website displaying these evaluations will be launched in about a month. It's meant to support excellence in health/medical journalism, but also to help people become smarter consumers of news and of health care. More details on this website in the weeks to come.

The wall that once existed between news and advertising has many gaping holes in it.

The Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog website says that some readers of the Charlotte News & Observer were bothered by the paper's handling of two pieces on the GlaxoSmithKline drug company this past Sunday.

The website says: "Big pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline got a lot of attention in last Sunday's News & Observer in Charlotte. On the front page was a story headlined, "GSK scientist pursues Alzheimer's treatment," that featured the pharmaceutical company's efforts to produce a breakthrough drug to treat or prevent the disease, reports Ted Vaden, a staff writer for the daily.

"I was just blown away, as a consumer advocate, by the GlaxoSmithKline one-two punch," said Adam Searing, a healthcare advocate with the N.C. Justice Center. "The first was the real puff piece about an Alzheimer's treatment that's two or three years away. Then I opened the Sunday Classified and it seems like Glaxo has bought half the classified section, and it's not even identified as advertising. I don't think it serves your high standards to allow someone like Glaxo to have such an influence on the newspaper."

The paper says the Classified story was not an ad. It just looked that way to some. They say it was actually a story written by a freelancer hired by the advertising department. (Doesn't that make it an ad?)

A North Carolina ethics prof said, "I don't think the line between advertising and editorial is as clear in your readers' minds as it is in your offices."