The Archives of Internal Medicine recently posted an article (Vol. 170 No. 6, March 22, 2010) and abstract we found to be of interest; it's written by Jessica Fishman, PhD; Thomas Ten Have, PhD; David Casarett, MD, MA
Background: Cancer receives a great deal of news media attention. Although approximately half of all US patients with cancer die of their illness or of related complications, it is unknown whether reports in the news media reflect this reality.
Methods: To determine how cancer news coverage reports about cancer care and outcomes, we conducted a content analysis of US cancer news reporting in 8 large-readership newspapers and 5 national magazines. Trained coders determined the proportion of articles reporting about cancer survival, cancer death and dying, aggressive cancer treatment, cancer treatment failure, adverse events of cancer treatment, and end-of-life palliative or hospice care.
Results: Of 436 articles about cancer, 140 focused on survival and only 33 focused on death and dying. Only 57 articles reported that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and 131 reported that aggressive treatments can result in adverse events. Although most articles discussed aggressive treatments exclusively, almost none (2 of 436) discussed end-of-life palliative or hospice care exclusively, and only a few (11 of 436) discussed aggressive treatment and end-of-life care.
Conclusions: News reports about cancer frequently discuss aggressive treatment and survival but rarely discuss treatment failure, adverse events, end-of-life care, or death. These portrayals of cancer care in the news media may give patients an inappropriately optimistic view of cancer treatment, outcomes, and prognosis.
The press release from Penn afforded more information: The study notes that unrealistic optimism is presented in most stories about cancer treatment, when in reality half of all cancer patients do not survive, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.
"The nation’s leading media institutions have set a low bar for routine coverage of the nation’s long-running war on cancer. Hype is the norm," wrote medical author Merrill Goozner, MS, in a commentary accompanying the article. "The relationship between journalism and medical researchers has been called a complicit collaboration in which both benefit from sensationalized stories. Recent media cutbacks and the evolution of a hyper speed news cycle only made things worse."
"The tendency of the news to report on aggressive cancer treatments and survival, but not on alternatives, is … noteworthy given that unrealistic information may mislead the public about the trade-offs between attempts at heroic cures and hospice care," the authors of the study wrote.
The trio looked at a random sample of 436 articles from a total of 2, 228 stories that appeared in the news from 2005 to 2007. Using databases such as Lexis-Nexis, they examined cancer-related stories in Newsweek, Parade, People, Redbook, and Time magazines; the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Daily Herald-Chicago, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Daily News. The selection of newspapers and magazines was based on previous research indicating that print publications were the most likely sources for this type of information.
"The absence of reporting about hospice and palliative care is significant given the numerous well-documented benefits for patients and family members," the authors wrote. "For many patients with cancer, it is important to know (this) … because it can help them make decisions that realistically reflect their prognosis and the risks and potential benefits of treatment."
Author Affiliations: Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Drs Fishman and Ten Have), Annenberg School for Communication (Dr Fishman), VA Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (Dr Casarett), Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Dr Casarett), and School of Medicine (Drs Fishman, Ten Have, and Casarett), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
