Gary Schwitzer began publishing HealthNewsReview.org in April of 2006 after a year of preparation. This project is the pinnacle of his 45-year health care journalism career.
It appears that this unique project’s span of more than 12 years of public service to journalism and to the general public will end in December when HealthNewsReview.org ceases publication. Our current funding ends then with no replacement funding in sight, and I will slip into retirement. I will still post an occasional piece. And I plan to keep the website open and searchable for a couple of years. But my terrific editorial team will reluctantly dissolve and go on to other pursuits.
I want the public to remember what we did when we were at full strength.
We were clear about what we stood for: improving the public dialogue about health care. We educated journalists and the general public to help them improve their critical thinking about health care, and about claims made in research, in journal articles, and in the marketing rollout of new health care interventions in the medical arms race.
Amidst the daily cacophony of claims of cures, breakthroughs and game-changers we became – for thousands of you – a place to turn to every day in order to step back, view the bigger picture, and learn how to ask tough, appropriate questions. Almost every day we have awakened to emails or social media messages with plaintive cries for “Help” or “Anxious to see what you have to say on this” in response to the tsunami of confusion washing over so many of you.
We stood for combating health care hype – from any source – because of the very real harm it can and does cause to real people.
We stood for sometimes standing alone – as we often did in certain situations and scenarios in which we knew we were the only publisher questioning evidence, the only one raising issues of conflicts of interest in health care or even in health care journalism, the only project to systematically analyze the quality of health care journalism and public relations efforts, and the only one to regularly scrutinize claims made in advertising, marketing, talk shows, op-eds and elsewhere.
Journalism, which is supposed to be a watchdog, needs to have a watchdog eyeing it – especially on health care topics so often polluted by inaccurate, imbalanced, woefully incomplete reporting. For 12+ years we have been that independent, expert watchdog. One physician, on Twitter this week, called us “the Mighty Mouse watchdog.”
When I started planning this project in 2005, I never thought about a 12-year run. I will forever be grateful for the initial support of Floyd J. (Jack) Fowler, PhD, of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making (now out of operation), and for the ensuing support that FIMDM gave this project for more than 8 years. Then, the four final years of support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation allowed me to build a team that brought this project to new heights of bold new undertakings and new impact. These were the purest of hands-off, no interference funding relationships. These have been the best years of my 45-year journalism career.
My team and I will share final personal parting thoughts closer to the end of the year. Meantime, we are hard at work on our new series telling stories of people discussing real harms from misleading media messages about health care. If anyone finds it easy to dismiss the caveats and constructive criticism from my expert team of industry-independent editorial contributors, maybe the stories of real people incurring real harm from shoddy mass media messages will open their minds. This series is one more of the kinds of themes you could only find addressed regularly on HealthNewsReview.org.
My widespread search for continued funding for this project has been fruitless. Maybe we’ve made it hard on ourselves by following a stricter fundraising conflict of interest policy than those of many of the journalism organizations we write about. But that was vital to our integrity. There is so much more that could be done – and needs to be done – to educate journalists, PR and marketing professionals, the health care industry and clinician-researchers about the harm that is done by shoddy and conflicted health care communication. So who will attack this need and provide adequate no-strings-attached funding for work like this in the future?
Will anyone take on a project like this again? Will anyone fill this void? Who? How? When?
If not, why not?
And with the HealthNewsReview.org team no longer systematically watching and reviewing every day, will the standards of responsible health care communication to the public be lowered? You can review the report card we published at the end of last year to see the scope of polluted health care news and public relations messages in this country.
How will we ever achieve truly meaningful health care reform when our public dialogue about health care is as misinformed and misguided as it is?
These questions will continue to burn in us – over the next six months and long after we cease publication. As my team breaks up and we go our separate ways, we will surely each continue to watch although our voices may not be heard as often or as powerfully as they were through this important platform for the past 12 years.
We hear you, Dylan Thomas. We will not go gentle into that good night, but will rage against the dying light.
Comments (15)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Jonathan Jarry
June 20, 2018 at 8:45 amTruly devastating. The work you do is invaluable. I respect your integrity and really wish someone would step in at the eleventh hour to save this precious ship….
Gary Schwitzer
June 20, 2018 at 12:40 pmThanks, Jonathan. We need more people chipping away from their own platforms – as you are doing – at the problems with pollution of health care information to the public.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Tio
June 20, 2018 at 8:53 amThis makes me both sad and angry. Nothing of good value can resist our money-hungry society. Somehow I still hope you can get funding to continue, but I suppose at this point this is quite difficult.
Rose Hoban
June 20, 2018 at 9:53 amI worry about similar things with NC Health News, Gary. All kinds of folks are lauding the rise of nonprofit journalism and how we’re going to “save the world,” but we lack the capacity to continue past the founders’ passion. Journalism is broken in many ways and will need things/ money/ a business model beyond piecemeal efforts to revive it.
Gary Schwitzer
June 20, 2018 at 12:38 pmAmen, Rose. And keep up the fight with NC Health News.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Kathi Mestayer
June 20, 2018 at 10:38 amI’m heartbroken.
Gary Schwitzer
June 20, 2018 at 12:42 pmKathi,
Remember, though, that the website, with its thousands of lessons about how to analyze studies and media messages about them, will remain open and accessible for several years into the future. The lessons will remain valid and important because we’ll continue to see the same recurring flaws and patterns of pollution in the flow of information to the public.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Lila Guterman
June 20, 2018 at 5:28 pmI’m very sorry to hear this! I’ve followed you from the beginning. What a useful and important resource this project has been.
Gary Schwitzer
June 21, 2018 at 9:03 amI wanted to share a bit of the outpouring of the emotional and/or supportive comments received via email or social media in response to yesterday’s announcement.
The emotions some of you have expressed include “horrible news…this sucks…oh, crap…say it ain’t so…this is tragic…this is a travesty.”
I’m touched by some of the labels people have assigned to us, such as: “utterly fearless & rigorously evidence-based…..a legacy of brutal but fair review criteria.” You could put that on our headstone. Other comments include:
• “In this era of harmful bullshit, @HealthNewsRevu has been a steadfast, essential anti-bullshit service.”
• “Clear-eyed, objective, always on point – a valuable resource for so many.”
• “a voice of reason and truth out in the world that is too often manipulated by profit and ulterior motives.”
• “single-handedly improved the dialogue on health research.”
There are too many to list. We are reading them all, and they hit home. Thank you for your kind thoughts.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Ellen Mitchell
June 22, 2018 at 9:43 amI’d be happy to help post reviews of health stories after you retire (will the website still be around?)
Gary Schwitzer
June 22, 2018 at 4:47 pmEllen,
Thanks for the offer. As explained in the blog post, the website will still be available online for several years.
But our well-oiled process of publishing new criteria-driven systematic reviews, employing 3 reviewers per article, will end.
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Tamara Sellman
June 22, 2018 at 2:00 pmThis makes me so sad. You’re one of the good guys, and a necessary watchdog in times of rampant misinformation. I hope you can find an angel to help keep your work alive.
Lydia Green
June 22, 2018 at 3:36 pmLike JJ hoping an organization will step in and provide funding. In either case, thanks for everything you have done, in particular all your content that clearly and concisely explains foundational concepts. Felt shocked when I saw the announcement this week that HNR might be closing up shop. My use of conditional words reflects my hope that there will be a reprieve.
Gary Schwitzer
June 26, 2018 at 2:37 pmYou may be interested in the article published by Undark magazine (from MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program). https://undark.org/article/healthnewsreview-funding-closing/
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
Gary Schwitzer
June 28, 2018 at 1:38 pmI wish to correct one possible misimpression I conveyed in the piece above when I said that my search for continued funding was fruitless. In fact, one major funder did recently approach me with a very well-intentioned grant possibility, but I declined it after deeming it insufficient to allow us to continue at a meaningful level of operation. So, not fruitless, just not fruitful enough.
Another piece about our work was published by our German counterparts at Medien-Doktor.de (“The German HealthNewsReview”). It is headlined, “Who will warn us when the watch dog remains silent? Gary Schwitzer, founder of HealthNewsReview.org, retires.” http://www.medien-doktor.de/medizin/sprechstunde/who-will-warn-us-when-the-watch-dog-remains-silent-gary-schwitzer-founder-of-healthnewsreview-org-retires/
Gary Schwitzer
Publisher
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