Expert quotes and exaggeration in health news: a retrospective quantitative content analysis

Abstract

This research is an investigation into the role of expert quotes Background in health news, specifically whether news articles containing a quote from an independent expert are less often exaggerated than articles without such a quote.Retrospective quantitative content analysis of journal articles, Methods press releases, and associated news articles was performed. The investigated sample are press releases on peer-reviewed health research and the associated research articles and news stories. Our sample consisted of 462 press releases and 668 news articles from the UK (2011) and 129 press releases and 185 news articles from The Netherlands (2015). We hand-coded all journal articles, press releases and news articles for correlational claims, using a well-tested codebook. The main outcome measures are types of sources that were quoted and exaggeration of correlational claims. We used counts, 2x2 tables and odds ratios to assess the relationship between presence of quotes and exaggeration of the causal claim.Overall, 99.1% of the UK press releases and 84.5% of the Dutch Results press releases contain at least one quote. For the associated news articles these percentages are: 88.6% in the UK and 69.7% in the Netherlands. Authors of the study are most often quoted and only 7.5% of UK and 7.0% of Dutch news articles contained a new quote by an expert source, i.e. one not provided by the press release. The relative odds that an article without an external expert quote contains an exaggeration of causality is 2.6.The number of articles containing a quote from an Conclusions independent expert is low, but articles that cite an external expert do contain less exaggeration.

Musculoskeletal healthcare: Have we over‐egged the pudding?

“…This may reflect the cognitive biases that we are all susceptible to but is also likely to be influenced by inaccurate health information that clinicians and patients are exposed to. News stories related to health interventions can be inaccurate, with a key problem being exaggerated health news, and interestingly this seems to be at least partly driven by exaggeration in the academic press releases that initially prompted the news story . Health information developed for consumers can also be lacking.…”

External points of view in the PrEPUK News Corpus

“…However, in newsrooms with fewer staff covering a greater range of topics, there is little time for independent research, and journalists rely on experts for assistance in interpreting and explaining the news (Albaek, 2011); this is especially pertinent in cases where there are concerns about health risks and the efficacy of treatments (Wagner, Gurr and Siemon, 2019). The prevalence of external points of view (EPVs) in health news has been demonstrated by Bossema et al (2019), who found that 88.6% of health news articles in the UK and 69.7% of health news articles in the Netherlands contained at least one quote.…”