February 18, 2015
British website gets “sassy” on Twitter about flawed health care journalism
London-based BuzzFeed reporter Jamie Ross writes, “The NHS Is Calling Out Journalists On Twitter For Getting Their Facts Wrong.”
The NHS is the British National Health Service.
The NHS contracts with a company called Bazian to look “Behind the Headlines” on health news stories.
We’ve written several times about the project. For example:
The project has apparently kicked it up a notch in its social media efforts, using Twitter ads to announce their latest reviews – as shown in the BuzzFeed story. Example:
Back in December, A US-based BuzzFeed reporter published, “11 Ways to Spot Bogus Headlines About Your Health,” and touched on some of our history: over 9 years we’ve posted nearly 2,000 systematic reviews of US health care news stories and another 2,000 blog posts about health care news, PR, advertising, marketing, and medical journal practices.
And, in fact, as of the start of this year, we’ve now begun looking at BuzzFeed stories. The first such review gave a score of 3 stars out of a possible 5. That’s 6 criteria graded satisfactory out of 10. We operate a bit differently than Behind the Headlines. They generally mention a news story as their “hook” at the top, then delve into the quality of the underlying science. We spend more time addressing point-by-point critiques of the journalism, in an attempt to help both journalists, and the public they serve, to better analyze the evidence.
———————-
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
https://twitter.com/healthnewsrevu
and on Facebook.
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.
Comments are closed.
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