Beyond Cures, Breakthroughs, and News Releases: Ideas for Covering Health & Medicine

We live in a time when there are multiple conflicts of interest when it comes to spreading health news and information. Among government, the drug and medical device industry, academic researchers, academic institutions and medical journals, there are many competing interests at play. The editor of the journal The Lancet recently said that the relationship between the drug industry and medical journals is "somewhere between symbiotic and parasitic." Journalists who are not aware of these conflicts, and who don't investigate them as a routine part of story research and interviewing, are not doing their job.
There is a troubling trend toward commercialism in health news, especially in television news. Single-source stories, in which commercial vested interests go unchallenged, dominate. Many TV stations refer viewers to links on the station's Web site. But those links may take users directly to commercial Web sites of those who are pitching products.
Is this journalism? TV journalists report on their own Lasik surgery, on their own CT scans, on their own use of wrinkle creams. Costs and evidence are generally not discussed. The Baltimore Sun in 2002 blasted two local TV stations for "an alarming parade of commercial tie-ins." Several stations across the country have sponsorship agreements with local medical centers that allow the institutions to place their content on the air.
Journalists who only report on medical breakthroughs or on the latest news releases from medical journals are not reflecting an accurate picture of the current health care system.
There must be a balance between stories about new therapies or technologies in medicine and stories about the cost, quality and evidence behind such new ideas. Journalists must tackle more stories about health policy: Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, rationing, retirees' benefits, resource allocation, chronic illness, and the cost and safety of prescription drugs. Journalists who concentrate on new ideas without covering questions of cost, evidence, quality and access may be contributing to the health care cost crisis.