Public Health in the 21st Century in the Social Imagination...

The below excerpt(cut and paste) is from ... "The National Center for Biotechnology Information" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221224/

Mass media plays a central role in people's lives. Its importance is evident in the amount of time people spend watching television, surfing the World Wide Web, listening to music, and reading newspapers and magazines. The delivery of information through mass media is instant and available around the clock. The proliferation of communication technologies— miniature TVs, handheld radios, and personal computer companions such as Blackberry and Palm Pilot—contribute to the omnipresence of the media in daily life. More and more, a growing proportion of “life experience” is mediated through communication technologies instead of being directly experienced or witnessed. The public health community and policy makers often do not appreciate the importance and power of the media in shaping the health of the public. More importantly, media outlets or organizations do not see themselves as a part of, or contributing to the public health system. As this chapter discusses, however, the media plays a number of roles in educating the public about health issues and has a responsibility to report accurate health and science information to the public.

Scientists and public health professionals believe that journalists, in writing attention-grabbing stories, VIOLATE the traditional norms that guide scientific communication. Nelkin (1996, 1998) notes that media constraints of time, brevity, and simplicity, for example, impede the careful documentation, nuanced positions, and caveats that scientists believe are necessary to discuss and present their work. Journalists, on the other hand, often see the use of caveats or qualifications as information that can be dismissed to improve the readability of a story. Furthermore, journalistic efforts to enhance audience interest violate other traditional scientific norms. For example, to create a human interest angle, journalists may look for personal stories and individual cases, although this may distort research findings that have meaning only in a broader statistical context.

Scientific journals may also contribute to the distortion of research findings. Scientific journals often prepare press releases for the news media to assist them in getting the story right. These attempts to translate research into news can be misleading. Woloshin and Schwartz (2002) reviewed the content of journal press releases and interviewed press officers at nine prominent medical journals. The study found that press releases do not routinely highlight study limitations or the role of industry funding. Formats for presenting data were also found to exaggerate the perceived importance of findings.

Fueling these tensions is the fact that scientists, health care professionals, and policy experts rarely receive training in public communication, and reporters are NOT well trained in science, medicine, and statistics. Both groups are generally untrained in risk communication.

A recent study (Voss, 2002) highlights reporters' self-perceptions about their own ability to report health news. The study surveyed reporters and newspapers in five Midwestern states. In response to questions about reporting ability, 49.7 percent of respondents reported it was sometimes easy and sometimes difficult to understand key health issues, and 31 percent found it often or nearly always (2.7 percent) difficult to do. Also, 51.3 percent of respondents reported that it was sometimes easy or sometimes difficult to interpret statistical data, whereas 27.4 percent found it often or nearly always (6.2 percent) difficult. More than three-quarters of respondents (83 percent) reported that they had no training to cover health topics. Similarly, a national survey of journalists and news executives found that only 12 percent of reporters covering health care are viewed as “extremely prepared” and 43 percent are viewed as “prepared” to cover health care issues (Foundation for American Communications, 2002).

To help ease these tensions and to improve the quality of the information delivered to the public, scientists and public health officials as well as journalists and editors should seek opportunities for training. The need for media training is acknowledged in the statement of Al Cross, President of the Society of Professional Journalists, who notes that “training is a good way to meet your public responsibilities” (quoted in Kees, 2002) and in the words of Melinda Voss, executive director of the Association of Health Care Journalists:

It seems to me that it is more important than ever that we as journalists really know how to do our jobs right, because so many critical policy decisions are being made that affect everyone. The ability to properly report medical studies and survey research and the ability to interpret statistics are all a part of doing the job right. We owe it to our audiences. (quoted in Kees, 2002).

The public is and should be concerned with health issues; yet, they are being fed misinformation by mainstream news. No wonder, there is a growing youtube/instagram platform for truth seekers which includes medical professionals trying to get the truth out there... trying to decipher (for you) the facts and truth from lies!