Media Doctor

This media monitoring project is grounded in the observation that the lay press plays a crucial role in the communicating health messages and notifying the public about research findings and new treatments. "Considering the substantial evidence of a link between health news reports and health behaviour, it is vital that the information the media provides is accurate, unbiased and complete."

The key vehicle for this attempt to promote better and more accurate reporting is the interactive Media Doctor website. As indicated here, news stories are identified by daily reviews of the major media outlet websites using a hand-searching approach, and then rated according to specific criteria. For example, in the category of Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM), Media Doctor reviewers would look to see if the article accurately clarifies whether the remedy is genuinely new or, instead, just a re-formulation of an existing treatment or drug. The rating would also revolve around questions such as whether balanced information about harms (frequency or seriousness) is provided, whether detail on information sources and potential conflict of interest is offered, whether appropriate alternatives (CAM and conventional) are described and compared, and so on. In fact, for a June 2008 publication, Media Doctor researchers tracked more than 200 news items about CAM published between January 1 2004 and September 1 2007.

Health.

According to Media Doctor, "the coverage of new medical treatments in the lay press is regarded as poor and is prone to exaggeration of facts in order to create unnecessary sensationalism....Promoters of new therapies employ professional public relations companies to prepare press releases that over-emphasise the benefits and minimise the potential harms of new products. These press releases often form the basis for stories in the lay press and are sometimes used directly without attribution. Advocates for treatments use the media to create pressure from the community to have them approved and funded and often do not take account of data on comparative efficacy and cost effectiveness..."

The Media Doctor team is interested in working with partners to extend the appraisal of medical news stories beyond the Western context, especially to developing countries where "there is limited government control of advertising content and comparatively low levels of journalistic training. There is evidence that the activities of drug companies are less well controlled in developing countries and therefore there is a greater potential for the media to be used inappropriately to influence public knowledge."