Media coverage of medical journals: do the best articles make the news?
BACKGROUND
News coverage of medical research is followed closely by many Americans and affects the practice of medicine and influence of scientific research. Prior work has examined the quality of media coverage, but no investigation has characterized the choice of stories covered in a controlled manner. We examined whether the media systematically covers stories of weaker study design.


METHODS
We compared study characteristics of 75 clinically-oriented journal articles that received coverage in the top five newspapers by circulation against 75 clinically-oriented journal articles that appeared in the top five medical journals by impact factor over a similar timespan. Subgroup analysis was performed to determine whether differences between investigations from both sources varied by study type (randomized controlled trial [RCT] or observational study).


RESULTS
Investigations receiving coverage from newspapers were less likely to be RCTs (17% vs. 35%, p = 0.016) and more likely to be observational studies (75% vs. 47%, p<0.001). No difference was observed in number of people studied (median: 1034 vs. 1901, p = 0.14) or length of follow-up (median: 1.80 vs. 1.00 years, p = 0.22). In subgroup analysis, observational studies from the media used smaller sample sizes (median: 1984 vs. 21136, p = 0.029) and were more likely to be cross-sectional (71% vs. 31%, p<0.001), while no differences were observed for RCTs.


CONCLUSIONS
Newspapers were more likely to cover observational studies and less likely to cover RCTs than high impact journals. Additionally, when the media does cover observational studies, they select articles of inferior quality. Newspapers preferentially cover medical research with weaker methodology.
Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Senthil
S
Selvaraj
Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess - Brockton, Brockton, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Durga S
DS
Borkar
Medical Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America.
Vinay
V
Prasad
D006801:Humans; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D018156:Journalism, Medical; D008402:Mass Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009524:Newspapers as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012107:Research Design