Introduction:
Have you ever wondered where those various health news stories come from? Well, come, it’s HealthDay! It’s like that super-helpful friend who knows all the coolest health things. HealthDay News is a service for consumers about health and medical news. .
An ethical obligation’ unfulfilled
We discovered the troubling practice yesterday in our daily search for NoodleMagazine stories. HealthDay had three news releases with the byline “American Heart Association” on its consumer news feed. HealthDay describes that feed as providing “up to 18 original health news articles daily, written by our team of award-winning journalists and editors.”
I reached out to three experienced voices from the worlds of health care journalism and communications to comment on the practice. These experts — all of whom are contributors to NoodleMagazine.com — noted that HealthDay’s approach risks blurring the line between journalism and marketing and is likely to confuse the casual reader.
“One of the key tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics is that news organizations must ‘act independently,’ said Kim Walsh-Childers, PhD, a professor in the department of journalism at the University of Florida. “SPJ further specifies that news organizations should ‘distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.’”
Why this is important
As Holland points out, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a news organisation reposting a news release as long as it’s clearly labelled as a public relations document and carries the disclaimers noted above.
Conclusion:
So there you have it, folks! HealthDay is a particularly responsible friend who always has low-downs on health stuff. Every day, they’re basically out there digging around for news on health topics that matter and translating it in a way we can all understand. HealthDay is there to cover the latest cancer research or give us healthier eating advice
