London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Public Health. 2013 Jan;127(1):39-45. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2012.10.001. Epub 2012 Dec 6.
To assess what makes a good piece of medical reporting in newspapers, to quantify what is being reported on in the major British newspapers, to identify the sources of the news threads, and to assess how these are reported.
Development and validation of a tool to assess the quality of reporting of health-related articles, and assessment of the quality of these articles in British newspapers.
Eight national daily newspapers from the UK were reviewed for 20 days over a 2-month period. All articles reporting newly emerging research pertaining to health in humans were included and reviewed independently by two raters. A descriptive analysis was performed. Subsequently, a quality assessment tool for use by a non-expert was developed and validated to objectively assess the quality of a newspaper article on a health-related topic.
The quality assessment tool was found to have good internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. The Daily Mail published almost twice as many articles as its nearest rival, The Daily Express, and over eight times as many articles as The Guardian. Articles in The Times were, on average, more than twice as long as those in The Sun and The Daily Telegraph. The highest quality articles were in The Times and The Independent, with the lowest quality articles in The Sun. The quality scores of anonymous articles were significantly lower than those attributed to named journalists.
There are significant differences in the quality of reporting within and between major daily UK newspapers, with anonymous articles being the poorest quality, and widespread reliance on press releases from the major UK scientific journals.
评估报纸上优秀医学报道的特点，量化英国主要报纸上的报道内容，确定新闻线索的来源，并评估其报道方式。
开发和验证一种评估与健康相关文章报道质量的工具，并评估英国报纸上这些文章的质量。
在两个月的时间内，对英国的 8 家全国性日报进行了为期 20 天的回顾。所有报道人类新出现的健康相关研究的文章都被包括在内，并由两名评分员独立进行了审查。进行了描述性分析。随后，开发并验证了一种非专业人士使用的质量评估工具，以客观评估有关健康主题的报纸文章的质量。
该质量评估工具具有良好的内部一致性和评分员间可靠性。《每日邮报》的文章数量几乎是其竞争对手《每日快报》的两倍，是《卫报》的八倍多。《泰晤士报》的文章平均长度是《太阳报》和《每日电讯报》的两倍多。《泰晤士报》和《独立报》的文章质量最高，而《太阳报》的文章质量最差。匿名文章的质量评分明显低于归因于署名记者的文章。
英国主要日报之间和内部的报道质量存在显著差异，匿名文章的质量最差，并且广泛依赖英国主要科学期刊的新闻稿。
