title: How can we improve medical reporting? Let me count the ways.
abstract: Gary Schwitzer, former medical correspondent at CNN and now a professor of journalism, listed "10 troublesome trends in TV health news," making the important point that most people today get their health information from the media, and from TV in particular. In this article, the author presents Schwitzer's list and expands it with 10 more troublesome trends. Good health reporting should provide a straightforward, balanced, comprehensible summary of health issues that provides context to information-hungry consumers; it should rarely be sensational, but always skeptical. And there should be a lot more of it.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. jmcmahon@jhsph.edu
authors.forename: Andre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Picard
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D018156:Journalism, Medical / Q000592:standards*; D008402:Mass Media / Q000592:standards*; D011057:Politics; D017594:Publication Bias; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D013690:Television / Q000592:standards*; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States