Rapid Responses to:
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editors and reporters should not be blamed
Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Bad news for research
- Lesley Fallowfield (17 December 2002)
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In search of understanding
- Michael O'Donnell (18 December 2002)
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In search of customers
- Simon Knowles (18 December 2002)
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The danger of irony
- Michael O'Donnell (19 December 2002)
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Lesley Fallowfield, Professor of Psycho-oncology Brighton & Sussex Medical School, BN1 9QG
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Dear Sir, I am astounded that you allow Michael O'Donnell space to make such specious comments about my letter. He misses the point entirely (in common with most journalists) and choses instead to make insulting remarks about my own putative communication skills. As I said in my letter, we are constantly telephoned by journalists wishing for information about or examples of doctors' poor communication. We generally refuse interviews unless allowed to speak about the increasing research on interventions to improve skills, such as that funded by Cancer Research UK. Sadly most journalists with a few notable exceptions, are not as interested in the good news as in the bad. For O'Donnell to portray me as 1) publicity seeking and 2) a poor communicator to boot, in defence of the bad journalism that many of us witness on a daily basis, is both grossly unfair and inaccurate. Sadly, worthy research is rarely seen as newsworthy and if O'Donnell were still at the coal face of clinical work he would realise how demoralising it is to be portrayed malevolently. At least the people who matter most in all this, the doctors who value our communication skills courses and their patients who benefit as a result of them, take a less jaundiced view of our abilities. As for O'Donnell's naive final salvo, he should know as well as anyone that the media researcher who sets up an interview is not the same person who conducts it. If one agrees in good faith to talk about research, only to find that the TV presenter has another objective entirely, it is not always possible to get the message across. Professor Lesley Fallowfield
Competing interests: None declared |
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Michael O'Donnell, Author of Medicine's Strangest Cases (Robson Books £8.99) available at all good bookshops. GU8 4BD
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Now that Lesley Fallowfield has blown off all that indignation, she should re-read what I actually wrote. I did not seek to defend bad journalism but tried to offer advice to doctors on how to avoid being manipulated by bad journalists. Unlike her, I don’t see “publicity seeking” as a bad thing. Indeed I believe that those who have knowledge or skills that they think others would be better off for knowing should try hard to publicise them, using the same techniques that people use to publicise themselves. But it's not easy to do. Sad though it be, if you want to publicise your ideas and skills in our 21st century media, you’ll likely get more effective help from Max Clifford than from people like the estimable Rob Buckman who have helped many doctors and their patients to understand one another. I don’t know if Lesley Fallowfield is a good communicator; I have not attended her courses. I do know, however, that I myself am an uncertain, verging on bad, communicator and humiliating experiences down the years have taught me the value of the advice that Dr Larkin offered in his rapid response to Lesley Fallowfield’s original letter – to turn down offers of interviews that are unlikely to be fruitful. I may well be naïve but I’ve rarely found it difficult to discover the context in which an interview will be used. Even when I’ve been misled, I’ve usually managed to escape. Twice in the past few years I have walked out of a studio when I discovered the true nature of the set-up. If you do this, the programme may go ahead without you but you at least deprive it of the sacrificial lamb demanded by dumbed down journalism. Competing interests: None declared |
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Simon Knowles, Pathologist Somerset
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How clever of O'Donnell to manage to sneak in a promo for his book above. A clear demonstration of consumate brass cheek. Sorry, I mean media savvy. By the way, has anyone ever seen an advert which claims that a publication was available for all BAD bookshops??. Competing interests: I too would like to advertise things for free on bmj.com but I don't have the media skills. |
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Michael O'Donnell, Professor of nothing in particular GU8 4BD
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Oh dear. I should kept my tongue out of my brass cheek and eschewed using using irony to illustrate "publicity seeking". My father once warned me that many people think that Irony is a country where the Ironists live. Competing interests: None declared |
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