Abstract
Objectives : To evaluate health stories from several representative news websites in the U.K. and in Japan with the Media Doctor Australia rating instrument in order to contrast the strength and weakness of Japanese health stories with that of U.K. ones.
Design :Cross-sectional study
Methods : Stories describing treatment or prevention of diseases published between January and June 2007 were retrieved from U.K. (BBC, Guardian, Independent, Times, Yahoo! UK,) and Japanese (Asahi, Yomiuri, Yahoo! Japan,) websites which specialize in health / medical news. The quality of retrieved stories was examined with an instrument developed by Media Doctor Australia. Overall score was contrasted between two countries.
Results : 296 U.K. stories and 79 Japanese stories were retrieved. The overall score by media outlet ranged between 45.7 (Asahi) and 63.4 (Independent) out of 100. When all outlets were pooled, U.K. stories (average overall score 60.0, 95%CI 58.2-61.8) were rated significantly higher than Japanese stories (47.8, 95%CI 45.4-50.2) (p<0.001).
Conclusion : Stories reviewed in this study did not provide satisfactory information from the viewpoint of Media Doctor Australia. This suggests that journalists and health service researchers can help each other for the better dissemination of health information to the general public.
