Articles

A Doctor Examines a Journalist’s Work

As she moves between being a doctor and a medical journalist, loyalties are divided.

Medical Journalism Training

Medical Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Journalism and Mass Communication. As one of the nation’s first master’s programs in medical journalism, the…

What Happens When Journalists Don’t Probe?

They fail to ‘fulfill their obligation to the public interest as counterweights in the American system.’

Medical Reporting In a Highly Commercialized Environment

A family doctor prescribes eight guiding principles for accurate and fair coverage of research findings.

Constraints on China’s Coverage of SARS

For a variety of reasons, neither the government nor the press handled the medical crisis well.

The Emotional Toll of Reporting on a Cancer Trial

‘I’d essentially planned to do a story about dying people with no real hope of a cure acting as guinea pigs.’

Helping Reporters Play the Medical Numbers Game

A journalist reminds us about how tricky putting ‘facts’ into perspective can be.

Critical Tools for Medical Reporting

A medical editor’s book provides advice and guidance for journalists.

Tips for Writing Medical News

Never use the word “miracle.” Leave that to ministers, mayonnaise-makers and sports-writers. Don’t use “breakthrough.” Breakthroughs are infrequent and this word, like controversy, is so overused that it has lost…

A Hard Look Finds a Network Script Fades to Blah

A journalist tracks where and how a medical story began and how its content came to be exaggerated.