PLoS Medicine - How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products, and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories: "News stories about new treatments, tests, products, and procedures appear daily. Such reporting should ideally be accurate, balanced, and complete so that health care consumers are properly informed and ready to participate in decision making about their health care. If reporting is inaccurate, imbalanced, or incomplete, consumers may have unrealistic expectations and demand of their physicians care that would be of little value or even harmful.
Is the news media doing a good job of reporting on new treatments, tests, products, and procedures? Ray Moynihan and colleagues analyzed how often news stories quantified the costs, benefits, and harms of the interventions being discussed, and how often they reported potential conflicts of interest in story sources [1]. Of the 207 newspaper and television stories that they studied, 83 did not report the benefits of medications quantitatively, and of the 124 stories that did quantify the benefits of medications, only 18 presented both relative and absolute benefits. Of all the stories, 53% had no information about potential harms of the treatment, and 70% made no mention of treatment costs. "
The one word answer to the question is - poorly !
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