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An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

BACKGROUND: To examine the accuracy and adequacy of lay media news stories about complementary and alternative medicines and therapies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A descriptive analysis of news stories about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Australian media using a national m...

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Autores principales: Bonevski, Billie, Wilson, Amanda, Henry, David A.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2405931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18545688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002406
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author Bonevski, Billie
Wilson, Amanda
Henry, David A.
author_facet Bonevski, Billie
Wilson, Amanda
Henry, David A.
author_sort Bonevski, Billie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: To examine the accuracy and adequacy of lay media news stories about complementary and alternative medicines and therapies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A descriptive analysis of news stories about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Australian media using a national medical news monitoring website, mediadoctor.org.au. Each story was rated against 10 criteria by two individuals. Consensus scores of 222 news articles reporting therapeutic claims about complementary medicines posted on mediadoctor.org.au between 1 January 2004 and 1 September 2007 were calculated. The overall rating score for 222 CAM articles was 50% (95% CI 47% to 53%). There was a statistically significant (F = 3.68, p = 0.006) difference in cumulative mean scores according to type of therapy: biologically based practices (54%, 95% CI 50% to 58%); manipulative body based practices (46%, 95% CI 39% to 54%), whole medical systems (45%, 95% CI 32% to 58%), mind body medicine (41%, 95% CI 31% to 50%) and energy medicine (33%, 95% CI 11% to 55%). There was a statistically significant difference in cumulative mean scores (F = 3.72, p = 0.0001) according to the clinical outcome of interest with stories about cancer treatments (62%, 95% CI 54% to 70%) scoring highest and stories about treatments for children's behavioural and mental health concerns scoring lowest (31%, 95% CI 19% to 43%). Significant differences were also found in scores between media outlets. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: There is substantial variability in news reporting practices about CAM. Overall, although they may be improving, the scores remain generally low. It appears that much of the information the public receives about CAM is inaccurate or incomplete.
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spelling pubmed-24059312008-06-11 An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Bonevski, Billie Wilson, Amanda Henry, David A. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: To examine the accuracy and adequacy of lay media news stories about complementary and alternative medicines and therapies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A descriptive analysis of news stories about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the Australian media using a national medical news monitoring website, mediadoctor.org.au. Each story was rated against 10 criteria by two individuals. Consensus scores of 222 news articles reporting therapeutic claims about complementary medicines posted on mediadoctor.org.au between 1 January 2004 and 1 September 2007 were calculated. The overall rating score for 222 CAM articles was 50% (95% CI 47% to 53%). There was a statistically significant (F = 3.68, p = 0.006) difference in cumulative mean scores according to type of therapy: biologically based practices (54%, 95% CI 50% to 58%); manipulative body based practices (46%, 95% CI 39% to 54%), whole medical systems (45%, 95% CI 32% to 58%), mind body medicine (41%, 95% CI 31% to 50%) and energy medicine (33%, 95% CI 11% to 55%). There was a statistically significant difference in cumulative mean scores (F = 3.72, p = 0.0001) according to the clinical outcome of interest with stories about cancer treatments (62%, 95% CI 54% to 70%) scoring highest and stories about treatments for children's behavioural and mental health concerns scoring lowest (31%, 95% CI 19% to 43%). Significant differences were also found in scores between media outlets. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: There is substantial variability in news reporting practices about CAM. Overall, although they may be improving, the scores remain generally low. It appears that much of the information the public receives about CAM is inaccurate or incomplete. Public Library of Science 2008-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC2405931/ /pubmed/18545688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002406 Text en Bonevski et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bonevski, Billie
Wilson, Amanda
Henry, David A.
An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title_full An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title_fullStr An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title_full_unstemmed An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title_short An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
title_sort analysis of news media coverage of complementary and alternative medicine
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2405931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18545688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0002406
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