[e-drug] New Web site for monitoring media coverage of new medical treatments

[mddah@mail.newcastle.edu.au]

E-drug: New Web site for monitoring media coverage of new medical treatments
---------------------------------------------

Readers of E-Drug may be interested in a new site that monitors the quality
of lay news coverage of new medical treatments in Australia.  The site
www.mediadoctor.org.au is maintained by the Newcastle Institute of Public
Health, a collaboration between the University of Newcastle (Australia) and
the Hunter Area Health Service (New South Wales, Australia).

Journalists often provide the first public information about new
treatments, but sometimes become unwitting messengers for those who want to
promote new treatments.  It is sometimes hard for them to write balanced
stories about new treatments because of lack of unbiased information,
difficulty in accessing independent informed opinion, time pressures and
editorial influences. As a scientific community interested in access to,
and appropriate use of, important medicines we have a responsibility to
assist journalists in their work.

The Mediadoctor site features news stories that make claims about new
medical treatments (and occasionally diagnostic tests).  This is ANY
treatment for which therapeutic claims are made, not just the new products
of big pharma.

The site features the stories with links to the full text of the
article.  Each story is assessed by two raters according to quality
criteria (available on the site) that are a modified version of those used
in a research project led by  journalist and writer, Ray Moynihan (the
abstract of the original paper is at
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/342/22/1645 ).

  A subsequent 'tip sheet" for journalists is
at  http://www.cmwf.org/media/releases/moynihan_release03222001.asp?link=11
   .
  Another comprehensive set of criteria have been proposed by The
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
  at  http://www.policyalternatives.ca/bc/drugs/drugs_journalists.html  .

I am sure there are others - perhaps E-druggers can help here.

The Mediadoctor Web site includes an item score for each criterion, a total
score, and a short critique of each news story.  At present there are 41
evaluated stories on the site and a cumulative average score for each media
outlet is provided under 'sources' (accessible from the menu).  You will
note that these scores are rather low and the hope is that  monitoring and
feedback will lead to an improvement. We intend to report our initial
experience after the first 100 stories have been featured.  The work is not
onerous - each article takes about 10 minutes to rate and another 10-15
minutes to achieve a consensus score and write a critique.  The main
challenge is scanning the media for stories and keeping the site up to date.

We are interested in communicating with anyone conducting a similar
exercise in other countries, or who are planning to.  It would be
advantageous to agree on a 'minimum data set' to be collected in each
country, as this would allow international comparisons.

David Henry
Professor of Clinical Pharmacology,
Faculty of Health,
The University of Newcastle, NSW
AUSTRALIA
Phone + 61 249 211856
Fax +61 249 602088
mddah@mail.newcastle.edu.au

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