What We Want In Health News Is Often Not What We Need
News of the World wasn’t read by 15 percent of the British public because it told people what they should know. It got there by giving them what they wanted: stories about the peccadilloes of the rich and famous, accounts of the gross incompetence of government and of course, pictures of naked ladies.
Setting aside the fact that News of the World is no more, its publishers and editors knew how to sell the “news.” As free online news replaces print, every click, every page view, every second of viewing per page is tracked in the fierce competition for ad dollars, and so the selling of news increasingly influences its reporting. Titles, format and content are tweaked by editors to “optimize the metrics.” Reporters succeed and fail based on their ability to write articles that attract eyeballs, not Pulitzer prizes.
In the health domain, the effects of these demands were described in a series of conversations the Center for Advancing Health hosted with health care journalists over the past month.* The themes that emerged were that journalists are often encouraged to: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*