title: Evaluation of newspaper articles for coverage of public reporting data: a case study of unadjusted cancer survival data.
abstract: The Japanese Association of Clinical Cancer Centers recently published the unadjusted 5-year survival rates of patients receiving care at each facility. A primary concern is that the media may cover this topic differently than originally intended. We examined all 13 newspaper articles that addressed the topic to assess their coverage of the public reporting program's key points, which were identified through interviews with the leader of the program. On average, 4.5 of the 10 key points identified were at least superficially covered. Although most articles mentioned the incomparability of the unadjusted data, eight created comparative tables that listed the survival data across facilities and seven sorted the facilities in descending order of survival. Four articles provided potentially misleading descriptions about the use of the relative survival. We concluded that caution is required because newspaper reports may convey potentially contradicting messages and technical details may be described inaccurately.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health/Health Policy, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. higashi@m.u-tokyo.ac.jp
authors.forename: Takahiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Higashi
authors.forename: Fumiaki
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Nobuhiro
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Saruki
authors.forename: Misa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takegami
authors.forename: Takayo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hosokawa
authors.forename: Shunichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fukuhara
authors.forename: Takeo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakayama
authors.forename: Tomotaka
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sobue
mesh_terms: D003146:Communications Media; D003625:Data Collection / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality*; D009524:Newspapers as Topic; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011639:Public Opinion; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000639:trends*; D015996:Survival Rate