Published 19 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2535
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2535

Observations

Medicine and the Media

Who’s watching the watchdogs?

Lisa M Schwartz, associate professor of medicine, Center for Medicine and the Media, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Hanover, New Hampshire, Steven Woloshin, associate professor of medicine, Center for Medicine and the Media, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Ray Moynihan, visiting editor, BMJ, and conjoint lecturer, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

Correspondence to: S Woloshin steven.woloshin@dartmouth.edu

Doctors should be wary of the increasing entanglement of medical journalists and the drug industry, warn Lisa Schwartz, Steven Woloshin, and Ray Moynihan

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

As watchdogs the media play a vital role in highlighting interconnections between doctors, researchers, and the drug industry.1 2 3 But who watches the watchdogs? Financial ties between medical journalists and for-profit companies they cover in their reporting have received little attention in the media or from the research community.4 5 Such ties warrant scrutiny, not least because many of us first learn about new treatments from the news media, and these reports can affect the way the public uses health care.6 The media also affect medical practice by influencing the medical literature: journal articles that get media coverage are more likely to be subsequently cited, regardless of the article’s intrinsic value.7 To promote awareness and provoke debate we discuss three areas of "entanglement": education of journalists, awards for journalists, and the actual practice of journalism.

Industry sponsorship of training and further education of journalists now occurs in a variety of contexts—universities, conferences, . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Pharmaceutical industry sponsorship and research outcome and quality: systematic review
Joel Lexchin, Lisa A Bero, Benjamin Djulbegovic, and Otavio Clark
BMJ 2003 326: 1167-1170. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Blurring the boundaries
Ray Moynihan
BMJ 2003 326: 1094. [Extract] [Full Text]

Press: Sponsored journalism award shocks Australian media
Melissa Sweet
BMJ 2001 323: 1258. [Full Text]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Watching the Watchdogs: Guilt by Association
Thomas R Linden, et al.
bmj.com, 28 Nov 2008 [Full text]
Journalists must recognize that drug companies want to win their favour
Joe Collier
bmj.com, 5 Dec 2008 [Full text]
Authors thank you
Ray N Moynihan, et al.
bmj.com, 7 Dec 2008 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ