Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20185

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Magazine

Limprecht E
Web watchdog bites media medical coverage
Australian Doctor 2005 Jun 304
http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/latest-news/web-watchdog-bites-media-medical-coverage

Full text:

MIRACLE wonder drugs and complementary health fads grab the headlines, but a comprehensive analysis of medical stories in Australia’s mainstream media reveals they are failing to keep the public properly informed.

A year after its launch, Media Doctor an online watchdog created by doctors at the Newcastle Institute of Public Health has reviewed more than 350 stories on topics ranging from Vioxx to Viagra.

The results suggested the quality of online stories was generally lower than newspaper coverage, with ABC News Online rated lower than the Daily Telegraph and slightly better than television’s
A Current Affair. The best coverage was offered by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian
Media Doctor’s Professor David Henry said some of the worst stories in the media related to fads and complementary therapies. He highlighted a Channel 7 story that recommended fasting as a method of weight loss.

And a story about the lipid-lowering drug Ezetrol on the ninemsn web site last year was almost a verbatim quote from the manufacturer’s press release, he said.

Media Doctor’s Dr David Smith, a GP, said patients often requested a particular drug after seeing a story about it.

Quite often I have patients coming in with a name of a drug on a scrap of paper, saying, “I want this” he said.

“It’s actually hard to talk them out of it, and sometimes you just give in because it is easier.”

Dr Smith said the medical profession, as well as journalists and editors, were responsible for this.

“We have to be more active and be better communicators,” he said.

Mr David O’ Sullivan, new media and digital services news manager at ABC News Online, said:

“Because we rely on radio primarily for our content on the web, this would explain the lack of depth of some of our stories … We have always known that we are really only giving a taste of what we could do.”