As I look around after my own 40+ years in health care journalism, I don’t see many others still plowing away at these topics for as long as I have. But today we profile one. In another of our series of podcasts profiling standouts in health/medical/science journalism, you have the chance to hear from Sharon Begley – someone who has been a class act with an outstanding body of work for nearly 40 years.
Newsweek > Wall Street Journal > Reuters > STAT news. Way too much for us to capture in a blog post or podcast.
But in this podcast, at least you get to hear from her directly about her cumulative experience, and about topics such as:
- “We’re still in a pre-Watergate phase in medical/science journalism”
- an “industrial-scale PR machine churning out spin”
- why she’s drawn to stories about cancer screening;
- why she’s not as optimistic as she once was about the future of medical/science journalism.
Here are links to some of Begley’s work cited in the podcast:
1997 – Newsweek, “The Mammogram War“
2009 – Newsweek, “Why cancer screening may not save your life“
2011 – Newsweek, “Some medical tests, procedures do more harm than good“
2016 – STAT News, “Is colonoscopy the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening?“
2016 – STAT News, “Are we facing an Alzheimer’s armageddon?“
Thanks to The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation for providing us with a grant to produce these podcasts.
Credit: podcast editor Cristeta Boarini
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