Cassels heads a team that launched a Canadian Media Doctor Web site ( ) in 2005.
In Canada, Alan Cassels and colleagues documented similar journalistic shortcomings.
Time (to research stories), space (in publications and broadcasts), and training of journalists can provide solutions to many of the journalistic shortcomings identified by the project. Reporters and writers have been receptive to the feedback editors and managers must be reached if change is to occur. After almost two years and 500 stories, the project has found that journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms. 
A US Web site project, ( ), modeled after similar efforts in Australia and Canada, evaluates and grades health news coverage, notifying journalists of their grades. The daily delivery of news stories about new treatments, tests, products, and procedures may have a profound-and perhaps harmful-impact on health care consumers. The project concluded, after its first six months experience, that “Australian lay news reporting of medical advances…is poor”. That project monitors the health news coverage of 13 Australian news organizations. Moynihan and colleagues' work was one of the inspirations for the creation of the Australian Media Doctor Web site ( ) in 2004. Of 170 stories that cited an expert or a scientific study, 85 (50%) cited at least one with a financial tie to the manufacturer of the drug, a tie that was disclosed in only 33 of the 85 stories. Of all the stories, 53% had no information about potential harms of the treatment, and 70% made no mention of treatment costs. 
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. 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. 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. 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.
News stories about new treatments, tests, products, and procedures appear daily.
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