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We’re a little late on this one but were reminded by reading a story in the latest print edition of Editor & Publisher about an online effort to review the accuracy of medical stories that appear in the press. Gary Schwitzer, the former head of CNN’s health news unit and director of the University of Minnesota’s Health Journalism program, talks to the magazine about his Web site, HealthNewsReview.org, which studies and rates the quality of medical reporting.

The site reviews health stories that “make a therapeutic claim” about things like “specific treatments, procedures” and “investigational drugs or devices.” The reviews, according to the site, are conducted by “a multi-disciplinary team of reviewers from journalism, medicine, health services research and public health” and the reviews are dedicated to supporting the “accuracy, balance” and “completeness” of health journalism. According to the article, the site is funded by a non-profit, the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. Schwitzer tells E&P:

There is so much high-quality health journalism being done … but there are still far too many [health reporters] who are thrown into this beat without the time or training or inclination to do it right.

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