Tough guy

Tough guyHealth Journalism professor Gary Schwitzer's new Health News Review rates health news stories on a 5-point scale. Stories are rated according to several criteria, including:

• If the story makes clear how novel the treatment is
• If the story describes where the treatment is available
• If the story describes other treatment options
• The credibility of the story's sources

Five stories have been rated since April 4, of which 1 received 3 stars, 3 received 2 stars, and 1 received 1 star. No stories received 4 or 5 stars.The site may provide useful feedback for journalists and editors, but it is only marginally useful for consumers. Mostly we learn that articles are poorly written and don't cover all the key information. Too few articles are reviewed and it's time consuming to go through the commentary.In my view, consumers who want better information about treatments would do better to try to read the professional literature --the abstracts of the original studies or objective sources such as MedPage Today and UpToDate.