Do you eat trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup? If you know the ingredients of what you’re eating, you can choose to avoid certain foods. But what about the consumption of health news? There is an enormous appetite for the latest medical findings, but no labels to tell us the ingredients: how are the stories selected, what are the sources of information, how accurate is the reporting. If we knew the ingredients, would we choose to avoid the majority of stories on medical research and health? In this post, I’ll discuss the ingredients of health news and, in the next post, I’ll suggest a reliable source.
The boundaries of truth
A highly respected, three-year study of science and health news coverage found that the selection and content of news stories are greatly distorted by the competitive pressures of journalism. The study was based on interviews with reporters and editors at leading news organizations. The quotations in this post are from that study (see Sources below).
“We have to almost overstate, we have to come as close as we can within the boundaries of truth to a dramatic, compelling statement.”
Media outlets need to attract viewers/readers and retain advertisers. Journalists want to see their story not simply in print, but featured prominently. The result, unfortunately, is a temptation to cross the “boundaries of truth,” as one journalist described it: “I’m in competition with literally hundreds of stories every day, political and economic stories of compelling interest. … We have to almost overstate, we have to come as close as we can within the boundaries of truth to a dramatic, compelling statement. A weak statement will go no place.” Journalists and editors are frequently torn between hyping a story and maintaining credibility.
From an editor of a leading newsweekly, speaking of science/medical news: “To get into print, you do have to beat the drum, and sometimes that leads to a little exaggeration.”
From another journalist: “There is always this tension of what is the strongest thing I can say about this story and still have it be accurate. It is not how wishywashy, how cautious, how moderate can I make it, and get it buried way back in the paper.”
Competitive journalism: Ambition and insecurity
The unstated assumption here is that “scaring the bejesus out of people” is a recognized journalistic practice when it comes to health news.
A journalist’s desire to see his/her story featured prominently is sometimes attributed, by fellow journalists, to excessive ambition or personal insecurity. This can change over time: “When I was trying to become a science writer, I felt compelled to come up with ‘groundbreaking’ stories of ‘vital importance.’ They had to appear that way to get the stories accepted. Now that I’m established, my judgment is accepted, so I don’t feel the pressures as much to ‘hype’ a story. In fact, I think I have a tendency now to sort of downplay research – to put it into perspective – because I think it is morally wrong to scare the bejesus out of people when it’s not justified.” The unstated assumption here is that “scaring the bejesus out of people” is a recognized journalistic practice when it comes to health news.
News sources compete for attention
The competitive pressure in journalism to go for the “strong” statement, risking distortion and deception, is complemented by the needs of news sources: politicians and researchers. Elected officials and public policy makers are subject to media politics. To win an election, to win public support for your policy, you need favorable media coverage. To get attention from journalists, you may need to oversimplify and over dramatize: “Basically, the political and journalistic mechanisms tend toward I was going to say ‘exaggeration,’ which is not quite the right word. It is more toward ‘stretching to the maximum within some permissible bounds.’ They tend to emphasize things in the direction they are trying to go. And that is just the nature of the game, someone – to get a story that will be read and displayed well, to get good strong reactions, you sort of have to go towards the limits of the permissible. … The whole mechanism is all focused on hitting a point hard.”
Medical centers, research scientists, biotechnology firms, and universities compete for publicity to generate funding. Many are not above exploiting the press to achieve their individual or institutional goals: “There are scientists who manipulate the press, who exaggerate their accomplishments, who neglect the contributions of their peers. And they often get away with it. Often the press is blamed for exaggerating something, and the scientists who gave them the story are just as much to blame.”
The medical press conference
A conscientious journalist, and the media in general, would ideally strive to identify and report the medical advances are most important and therefore newsworthy. This intention is frequently blindsided by the public relations strategies of academic medical centers that announce research at press conferences: “I felt bad about being victimized by the scientific establishment. The institutions would use the journalists’ competitiveness against journalism, and against, I thought, the public interest. And we would go up like lambs to slaughter, and do exactly what the PR people in the institutions would want. All of these reporters, broadcast and print, would be at the press conference, and they would know that if they don’t report the story today, they will be beaten by the guy sitting next to them. So everyone would rush to write the story.”
The quotations in this post are from an article by Jay A. Winsten, “Science and the Media: The Boundaries of Truth.” Winsten is director of The Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health. (Actually, he’s the Frank Stanton Director of the Center, named after the CBS executive who televised the first presidential debate and who was threatened with jail for refusing to hand over papers relating to “The Selling of the Pentagon” documentary.) Winsten’s close ties to the journalism community — he writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor – may account for his excellent access to sources and the candidness of the responses he obtained.
OK, so we know that medical news is a problem. What do we do? As I asked in an earlier post, how do we find a happy medium between burying our heads in the sand and staying informed? Can we learn to read between the lines of the latest health scares and avoid information that unnecessarily increases anxiety?
In the next post I’ll introduce you to a source of medical news I highly recommend.
Sources:
Jay A. Winsten, “Science and the Media: The Boundaries of Truth.” Health Affairs (Millwood). 1985 Spring; 4(1) : 5-23. (PDF)
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