How the media are failing the health service

doi:10.1136/bmj.a572

Observations

NHS at 60

How the media are failing the health service

Jon Snow, newscaster, Channel 4 News, London

Jon.Snow@itn.co.uk

The overwhelmingly negative slant that the media give to reportingof the health service in Britain does not reflect the experiencesof newscaster Jon Snow or those of people he talks to, he recounts

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

What is it about the NHS that stimulates such an appetite inthe media for bad news and almost none for the good? For me,this issue came to a head with the reporting of the outcomeof the great "deep clean" of hospitals. In any other walk oflife, 94% of all hospitals having been deep cleaned by the targetdate would have been regarded as a supreme achievement—butnot, it seems, when it comes to the NHS.

Inevitably, we in the media wanted to know the identities ofthe 6% that had failed. We wanted to name and shame them. Sodid ministers. Inevitably the attitude of the media to the NHSis strongly influenced by ministers’ behaviour. Unqualifiedcondemnation of an individual hospital becomes a free-for-allfor irresponsible and slapdash journalism. News reporting ofthe failure of Hospital A goes no further than the failure itself.The . . . [Full text of this article]

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