We often say ‘health is wealth,’ but we take health for granted. A similar trend has persisted over decades regarding health coverage in the media. Unlike politics, sports, automobiles, and even entertainment, health and medical news are not perceived as a mainstream segment among media stakeholders.
There has hardly been a dedicated segment covering health and medical news in our part of the world. The journalists covering health news often consider it a transition assignment before they can jump onto perceptibly more exciting and rewarding segments of journalism.
Two major drivers have emerged in the last few years. First, the Covid-19 pandemic led to an explosion of social and medical misinformation. A UK-published report showed that of the 1,100 pieces of information on air regarding the pandemic, only 9% were correct, while the rest were categorised as misinformation or disinformation.
Misinformation is false information spread regardless of intent to mislead; disinformation, on the other hand, is misinformation spread intentionally. Both are deep-rooted challenges in journalism, particularly in health and medical news.
The former is due to journalists with a non-science background covering highly technical health and medical news, while the latter arises due to sensationalism, and sometimes, possible conflicts of interest of involved commercial healthcare stakeholders.
The second driver is the emergence of the digital revolution. There is a huge wave of news consumption online and brief content forms such as reels, shorts, etc. Often crisp, though not always maintaining complete scientific sanctity, these have enhanced people’s appetite for health information.
These two major drivers, combined with a growing young health-aware population, medical students, and doctors using digital learning tools to stay updated, have propelled an urgent need for responsible medical journalism.
How to get into medical journalism
Though individuals from varied backgrounds pursue medical journalism, it can largely be divided into two domains. The first ones are professionals with journalism-trained backgrounds who eventually learn the nuances of medical news reporting out of passion and/or experience, picking up certain certifications in medical journalism along the way.
The second group, probably more evolving in this space, are medical, paramedical, and life science-trained professionals who can grasp complex medical information effectively. These professionals lack the media style of writing skills and journalistic subtlety. This group, too, eventually benefits from work experience and journalistic skill upgrade courses.
Navigating commercial content
Medical information is dynamic, constantly evolving, complex, and vulnerable to disinformation. If the motive of the content is to elicit a specific biased message, the same piece of medical information can be interpreted, presented, and toned with different, prejudiced connotations. This remains a significant challenge in pursuing responsible medical journalism.
Navigating medical news requires a curious bent toward truth, an eye for detail, and a constant strive for accuracy. In addition, having a bird’ s-eye view of the resource material from which the medical news is derived is critical.
For example, while interpreting the results of the landmark trial of a new treatment drug, the journalist might be floored by its efficacy without noting in detail the magnitude of safety aspects or cohort size. There can be various instances where medical news information is susceptible to misinterpretation or incomplete interpretation.
The healthcare stakeholders—the people, healthcare professionals, and the industry, need the force of the latest and most updated health and medical knowledge and, importantly, accurate medical information to make a meaningful impact towards achieving a robust healthcare system. Responsible medical journalism is a vital stimulant empowering every stakeholder.
(The author is the founder and editor-in-chief of a health magazine)