In the past 3.5 years, we’ve reviewed more than 900 stories – always reviewing them the same way, applying the same ten standardized criteria. It’s an approach that has caught the eye of journalists, health care consumers, health care communicators and many others.
The approach won’t change, but which stories it is applied to is changing.
Now under review
Starting today, this is the list of news organizations that we will review on a regular basis, accepting for review only those stories that include a claim of efficacy or safety in a treatment, test, product or procedure.
We will review the website of these top circulation newspapers every day.
1. USA Today
2. Wall Street Journal
3. New York Times
4. Los Angeles Times
5. Washington Post
6. Chicago Tribune
7. Houston Chronicle
8. Arizona Republic
9. Denver Post
10. Dallas Morning News
We will review one of three wire services every day, rotating among these three:
Associated Press health news
Reuters Health
HealthDay
Also on our list for regular inspection of what appears online:
National Public Radio website health & science page
Reader’sDigest.com health page
MSNBC.com health
CNN.com/health
WebMD.com
Time
Newsweek
US News & World Report
We announced a few months ago that we had stopped applying our daily rigorous review to network television news stories for a variety of reasons.
But we will continue to make periodic comments on things we see on TV, as well as things we see in magazines (besides those mentioned above).
New (old?) blog voice
We will introduce a daily blog within www.HealthNewsReview.org – a blog that has been maintained by publisher Gary Schwitzer in a different location for the past 5 years. It is one of the longest-running and most highly-recognized health blogs on the Web. Through the blog we’ll comment on issues, angles, and themes that go beyond the scope of our news reviews. And we’ll often have guest perspectives from our reviewers, medical editors and from health care journalists.
We welcome your comments on our blog and look forward to hosting a meaningful discussion about health journalism and about patient decision-making.
Our transparent ten criteria
We’ve built a new section of the site to more fully explain the importance of the ten criteria we use to evaluate stories. Each of the ten criteria is explained in more depth, with thumbs up/down story examples for each of the criteria, and with patient or physician video clips explaining the significance of the criteria in a patient’s fully informed decision-making.
This is only an introduction to some of our new features. Look around. Learn. Comment.
We welcome you back to our remodeled home.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
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.
Tanya Copeland
December 11, 2009 at 3:32 amYou and your team have done a very nice job enhancing the site features this year; thanks for all of your hard work.
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