Truth in Health Care Reporting - Is It Becoming Extinct?

Here’s part of an e-mail I received recently from the Association of Health Care Journalists. It contained a story written by Naseem Miller, a health reporter at the Star-Banner in Ocala, Florida. Here are the opening paragraphs.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it lasted only one issue.

The Capital, a 47,000-circulation daily newspaper in Annapolis, Md., sold its weekly Health Page to Anne Arundel Medical Center, a local hospital, one day in March, putting it in charge of all content, including the stories and layout.

And a bit further into the story:

The day the Health Page was published, the alarms went off so loudly and so clearly that the newspaper ended the agreement with the hospital.

The deal, or partnership, was ethically and journalistically wrong, unfair to the readers and a bad business decision, according to experts, and even the paper's publisher.

I gasped. So the newspaper biz has come to this, I thought.

I have a soft spot for newspapers; I worked at one for 15 years, most of that time as a health and medicine writer. But now newspapers are in big financial trouble—mainly because people are doing just what you’re doing right now—getting information online. Most newspapers now are online, too, but attracting advertising to these sites has been less than a rousing success. Ad revenue for print editions also is down because advertisers figure everyone is going online for their news.

A vicious circle, to be sure. And no one knows how low newspaper bottom lines will go. The future doesn’t look bright, for sure.

So why should you and your patients care about this story or similar happenings with other newspapers?

For one thing, there are still a lot of people who read the paper and have a difficult time distinguishing between ads and editorial copy, especially when hospital ads look like editorial copy. This means consumers/patients and medical care providers are getting incomplete—and maybe even incorrect—information.

Anyone who cares about making the right decisions about health care gets a raw deal.

When patients bring in articles from newspapers, magazines or other media sources, are you able to discern the valid information from the questionable information?

Do you think it’s important to do so?

What do you consider good sources of medical and health care information for the public?