A Ph.D. for Healthcare Reporters?
Several speakers delivered a real zinger at this month's American Medical Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. on health reporting and medical communications. Several panel members in a session the first day suggested that medical reporters should be accredited to ensure that medical coverage is filled with fact - not fiction - when it comes to healthcare news.
The idea is to test and certify the knowledge of medical reporters and editors on a range of issues, from interpreting studies correctly to understanding epidemiology or the ebola virus. It's an idea that has appeal, sources told us, but is fraught with problems of how to mandate this process and who should regulate it.
"If we require these credentials, where does that stop?" said Dorey Zodrow, senior director of communications at the Baylor College of Houston. "But I will tell you that nothing sends shivers up my spine more than when I have a group of cub reporters covering something."
Not to mention that the Internet, a perfectly respectable information vehicle if the source is former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, also makes anyone with a Web site a self-appointed publisher. Exactly what is a journalist in the 90s?
The Panel's Case
Dr. Tim Johnson of "20/20" fame was one of the AMA panelists advocating accreditation as one way the profession can help ensure that medical news is accurately reported.
"If there is one change I feel in my bones, it would be the tabloidization of the news," Johnson told an audience of 100 or more. "It is the trend that most worries me, most saddens me." Johnson is also the founding editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter.
Other panelists were Bruce Hensel, chief medical, health and science editor/reporter for NBC in California and emergency room director for Century City and San Dimas Community hospitals: Brian McDonough, medical editor for Fox/Philadelphia and a clinical associate professor of family medicine and community health at Temple University who maintains his own practice; and George Strait, ABC's medical correspondent for "World News Tonight."
Strait was the only non-physician on the panel, but not the sole dissenter on the credentialing proposal. The devil's advocate was McDonough who suggested that accrediting journalists, even medical journalists, might just be a new way to generate revenue for whichever organization became the controlling body.
The problems with accurate medical reporting take many forms, according to the speakers. These include: research and studies that indicate possibilities but are held up as "truisms" in news articles and reports, and the competition in the news industry that leads to snappy but misleading headlines and the piquant sound bite not backed up by the full story.
"I remember someone once asking, 'Can't you just say the pill causes breast cancer?' recalled Hensel. "It's a much better tease."
Please, Just The Facts
The panelists cited numerous instances in which the media has muddied the waters rather than educating readers about diseases, medications, treatments and public health concerns. An example raised several times by several panelists was the media's handling of necrotizing fascitis - dubbed the flesh-eating disease. The bacteria has existed for about 70 years, but the media presented it as a shocking modern plague.
Even 20/20, Johnson said, has struggled with the line between news and sensationalism. He cited the April 16, 1999, segment of the program on a controversial neurosurgical procedure for stroke victims that involves a portion of the skull being removed to decrease brain swelling. Program execs debated the story before scheduling it for broadcast.
"I think the question really is, 'What process is used to train [medical journalists]?,'" said Helga Rippen, director of the Health Information Technology Institute, McLean, Va., who attended the conference. "I'm not sure that accreditation is the answer, but there does need to be some checks-and-balances in place."
(Baylor College, 713/798-4712; HITI, 703/610-2442)
M.D. Journalism 101
None of the panelists had determined exactly how testing and accreditation should be enforced or which organization should be empowered to grant credentials. Nevertheless, the idea is sure to spark debate in a profession that is tough to define and protected by the First Amendment. For those in media relations, here are the questions the medical industry is pondering:
Source: HPRMN