Editor—Information in the mass media is commonly thought to negatively shape the demand for health services, raising false hopes and generating emotional reactions and irrational behaviours. Oversight and misinterpretation of research information are indeed common ingredients of messages from the lay media, often leading to conflicts and tensions between health services and consumers and to public expectations that are bound to remain largely unmet.
Nevertheless, empirical research shows that the mass media may also positively affect the use of health services, promoting the use of effective interventions and discouraging the adoption of those of unproved or questionable effectiveness.1 When research information is properly reported, the mass media can be instrumental in producing a more rational demand for health services.2 Thus, current efforts are justified whose aim is to assure that what is reported in the lay media accurately represents the best knowledge on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions.
However, the mass media should not be regarded only as conveyors of research information. They may also have a role in representing societal views and identifying important needs that would otherwise remain unknown. Priority setting, organising health services, and choosing among different ways of managing healthcare problems call for enhanced participation from both the public and patients to deal adequately with choices that are often a matter of conflicting values. The mass media may fruitfully act at the interface between research and health services, promoting participation, fostering wider debates, and representing opinions and values often overlooked within the research community. However, if the mass media are to bridge the gap between research and society and between health services and the public, ways are needed to achieve continuous communication between journalists and health professionals.
Both parties need to become more familiar with each other’s language and rules and more conscious of the responsibility they share in assuring that patients’ and the public’s values are properly and fairly represented in the delivery and organisation of health care.
A good starting point would be that health professionals stop uncritically blaming the media whenever tensions with the public occur. As recently shown by the Di Bella affair in Italy,3 conflicts in health care are more likely to emerge and spread when communication between health services and patients is lacking, when clinical policies are not transparent, and when the medical profession falls short in its accountability for setting up standards of good quality care and validating them.4,5
References
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