Health Journalist Role Conceptions

Putting a Face on It

“…The health sector is characterized by rapid progress and the expansion of medical science, described as the medicalization of society (Clarke, Mamo, Fosket, Fishman & Shim, 2010;Conrad, 2007;Nettleton, 2013). As contemporary health and medical science is increasingly specialized and technical, health reporters are largely dependent on medical expertise (Tanner et al, 2015;Visnawath et al, 2008) and often perceive themselves as translators and interpreters of medical information (Forsyth et al, 2012;Hinnant, Jenkins & Subramanian, 2016). Over the last 50 years, the relative dominance within the elite segment shifted from health authorities and individual physicians to expert sources in medical research and, more recently, the pharmaceutical sector (Hallin, Brandt & Briggs, 2013;Karpf, 1988).…”

Differences in Perceptions of Health Information Between the Public and Health Care Professionals: Nonprobability Sampling Questionnaire Survey

“…Some studies have indicated a connection between information seeking and actual behavioral improvement [33,34], with effective searching for Web-based health information leading to positive outcomes such as an improved understanding of medical conditions, an improved understanding of treatment options, informed decision making, and effective stress reduction [35-39]. On the contrary, Web-based health information can also contain misinformation and disinformation and can influence the behavior of people from various health fields [16,40-42].…”

“…In addition to doctors, before the digital revolution, the main agents through which the public obtained medical information were traditional media sources (eg, television and the press) [22,83-87]. Journalists who write about health acted as middlemen in communicating information to the public [16,42,88,89]. In today’s age of new media, professional journalists constitute a new voice in the discourse, alongside citizens who also define themselves as journalists [16,42,90].…”

“…Journalists who write about health acted as middlemen in communicating information to the public [16,42,88,89]. In today’s age of new media, professional journalists constitute a new voice in the discourse, alongside citizens who also define themselves as journalists [16,42,90]. Nevertheless, health journalists still play an important role because they are considered to be professionals by the general public, which continues to read their Web-based articles [16,88,91].…”

“…These problems primarily emerge in the tendency toward sensationalism and over-enthusiasm in describing medications and medical technologies by placing excessive emphasis on their benefits while ignoring or hardly mentioning their risks, side effects, or costs [92-98]. The literature also found that journalists rely increasingly on websites and press releases from the medical industry and health organizations, which can result in the public perceiving professional journalism as biased and lacking credibility [42,99-101].…”