The association between quality measures of medical university press releases and their corresponding news stories—Important information missing

Abstract

Background The news media is a key source for health and medical information, and relies to a large degree on material from press releases (PR). Medical universities are key players in the dissemination of PRs. This study aims to 1) explore the relation between the quality of press releases (PRs) from medical universities and their corresponding news stories (NSs) and 2) to identify the likelihood that specific scientific and interest-raising measures appear or are omitted in PRs and NSs. Methods and findings In this retrospective study using quantitative content analysis, PRs (n = 507) from 21 medical universities in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the USA and the UK were retrieved. Of all PRs, 33% had media coverage, resulting in 496 NSs. With two codebooks, 18 scientific (e.g. reporting the study design of the study correctly) and 7 interest-raising measures (e.g. words like ‘ground-breaking’) were evaluated in the PRs and NSs. For all measures the percentage of presence in NSs and PRs was calculated, together with a Mean PR Influence Factor. Quality of PRs and NSs was defined as a score, based on 12 of the 18 scientific measures. Mean (SD) NS quality score was 6.5 (1.7) which was significantly lower than the PR score of 8.0 (1.5). The two quality scores were significantly correlated. Quality measures that were frequently omitted included reporting important study limitations (present in 21% of PRs, 21% of NSs), funding (59% of PRs, 7% of NSs) and conflicts of interest (16% of PRs, 3% of NSs). We did not evaluate the quality of the scientific papers (SPs), and can therefore not determine if the quality of PRs and NSs is associated with the quality of SPs. Conclusions This large study of medical university press releases and corresponding news stories showed that important measures of a scientific study such as funding and study limitations were omitted to a very large extent. The lay public and health personnel as well as policy makers, politicians and other decision makers may be misled by incomplete and partly inaccurate representations of scientific studies which could negatively affect important health-related behaviours and decisions.