Gary Schwitzer is the founder and publisher of HealthNewsReview. He has covered health care news almost exclusively since 1973. Here is his online bio. He tweets as @garyschwitzer or as @HealthNewsRevu.
I’ve been asked to do more interviews in the past six months than in any recent comparable time span. COVID-19 is almost always the reason for the requests.
Some of the more recent requests were spawned by the JAMA Viewpoint article, Communicating Science in the Time of a Pandemic, that I co-authored with Richard Saitz, MD, of Boston University School of Public Health,
Covering COVID-19: A health check for science journalism – the cover story of the summer issue of the Gateway Journalism Review (what used to be the St. Louis Journalism Review) – included interviews with many fine journalists about the challenges of covering the pandemic.
They chose to lead the story by quoting me about what keeps me up at night – personally and professionally.
“Personally, Schwitzer is aggrieved by his battle with board members of his homeowners association, who he said have resisted his recommendation for residents in his Twin Cities condo complex to wear masks.
Professionally, it’s journalism, specifically the state of science and health journalism during a global pandemic that follows a decade during which newsrooms have lost dedicated science and health reporters.”
Among other recent articles mentioning HealthNewsReview.org were these:
CNN’s story, Science by press release: When the story gets ahead of the science. In the interest of full disclosure, that story probably should have noted that I covered medical news for CNN from 1984 through 1990.
The Washington Examiner’s piece, ‘General public grasping at straws’: Flawed science communications mislead a scared public.
The Association of Health Care Journalists’ Covering Health blog article, Protect readers’ time and bandwidth from unpublished trials.
A blog article from The Center for Health Journalism at The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, How can reporters responsibly cover preliminary research on COVID-19 drugs and vaccines?
And in one week’s time a while back, in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times:
How coronavirus is revealing the problems with ‘fast science.’
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
We connect the dots between the murder of #GeorgeFloyd , structural racism, and #publichealth with the help of @GeorgesBenjami7 of @PublicHealth , @annapoetic of @minneapolisgov , and @sandrogalea of @BUSPH https://twitter.com/PublicHealthUMN/status/1316813156249931777
"please do not project certainty where certainty simply doesn't exist"
Golden nugget of wisdom for emerging #science + #medicine journos looking not to fall for shiny happy PR bullshit.
HT @garyschwitzer + @HealthNewsRevu
Hear the rest here
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽🎧🎙️
https://www.patreon.com/posts/42537673
New ep of @hilarious_is with @garyschwitzer of @HealthNewsRevu - he's the Michael Corleone of myth-busting in health and medicine news!
Just
Press
Play
#podcast #journalism #FactCheck #science #medicine
https://www.patreon.com/posts/42537673
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