“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 ongoing debates about the future of our health care aystem, health did not become a dominant part of the 2008 primary campaign narrative. Looking at all of the presidential campaign coverage over the first six months in 2008, health-focused stories made up less than 1% of the coverage.
While the analysis ended in June, I’ll go further and predict that a systematic analysis of the June – November period would show that health policy coverage didn’t improve any.
The report concludes:
“Given the small portion of national news information that is dedicated to the health care system, it may be difficult for the public to become fully knowledgeable about the state of our system and potential changes under debate.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Annie
November 24, 2008 at 1:36 pmThis doesn’t surprise me. Indeed, I’m a little surprised that it’s as high as what was stated given the horse race seemingly infinite campaign reportage.
But I’m also concerned that even in light of this, that professional nursing is still being ignored across all media.
I had the serendipitous opportunity to pitch nursing to Jon Meacham, and I blogged about it (link at my name). Even though I’m soliciting feedback and criticism, I haven’t received any from any corner of the intertubes. Care to give it a go?
Michael
November 25, 2008 at 11:09 pmHello, I’m a physician trying to do my part in making up for the lack of medical news. I started a health news site, InteractMD.com, privately funded by me, to draw attention to the very small number of high-quality health news articles published in the media every day.
I have to say that as “anemic” as the health news is, there’s still a high volume of low-quality junk that gets pushed out the door every day. The same goes for our medical journals–95% of it is not news, rehashes of old stories, hopelessly preclinical, etc.
As bad as it is, the mainstream media does drive patient opinion. I hear people tell me everyday what they heard on TV or saw in the paper. I don’t get blindsided any more now that I peruse the news daily, and I have to say I’ve learned a lot of medicine in the process.
I hope you’ll check out my site, and perhaps consider contributing a story.
Regards,
Michael Benjamin, M.D.
InteractMD.com
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like