June 2000 Healing News

Ayurvedic school and hospital open in London

Infectious diseases are dangerously on the rise

News Media blasted for reporting bias

Distortion in media coverage of prescription drugs

Update on Thomas Navarro

Organic farming is profitable

Reclaiming our health

Suicide and genes

Americans do not drink enough water

Repairing the damage of stress naturally

NEWS MEDIA BLASTED FOR REPORTS ON MEDICINES

Reports about medicines in newspapers and on television commonly contain little or no information about drugs' risks and cost, and often cite medical "experts" without disclosing their financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, according to a new study. The analysis of 207 recent news stories on three popular drugs also found that most of the reports failed to provide enough quantitative information to allow readers or viewers to assess the drugs' likelihood of preventing certain diseases. Instead, study findings were reported in a way that tended to overstate the possible benefits.

"Over half the stories were totally silent on side effects," said Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist who initiated the study during a one year fellowship at Harvard Medical School. "What we're seeing here is the media behaving too often like a cheering squad rather than the skeptics that we want them to be." The analysis of how the news media handle information about drugs comes at a time when rising prices for prescription drugs are a major contributor to increasing health care costs, and when the results of favorable studies are feverishly promoted by pharmaceutical companies.

"Reporters and editors need to be careful," said Aly Colon, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. Reporting on medicines "has tremendous impact on the readers or viewers or listeners, especially if they're ill with the disease being discussed."

The study was paid for by the Commonwealth Fund and by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, a nonprofit health maintenance organization.