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:
Media heralds the discovery of ‘infidelity gene’ – see the #BehindTheHeadlines report here: http://t.co/q9PuJGGyny pic.twitter.com/orLxUmWIX8
— NHS Choices (@NHSChoices) February 17, 2015
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.
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Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
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