We touched on this topic briefly during a class session. Linda mentioned her experiences with doing some writing for television medical programs, and the amount of challenge involved in trying to provide accuracy as a knowledgeable professional, while dealing with television producers whose job it is to provide drama and excitement for the viewer. Often accuracy goes out the window. After 25 years of dealing with the same myself on the news side, I can relate personally.
This article, from Forbes.com, addresses the issue of how these programs frequently make mistakes in the information ultimately shared with viewers, despite their reliance on any number of experts and consultants there to provide accurate representations of diseases, and medical procedures. With a more sophisticated consumer/viewer, there's little concern that these shows are seen as nothing more than entertainment. However, a number of studies have published data that this perception may be far from reality.
It's no secret that many lay people get and rely more and more on information gleaned from popular media, and less from reliable sources. These studies, published in several scholarly journals, presented findings that showed viewer perceptions and beliefs about procedures such as cosmetic surgery, to organ donation, that were directly attributable to these programs.
So what do you think?
Is this unfolding trend the result of blatant disregard for the facts on the part of TV networks, who use creative license beyond its purpose--in other words taking entertainment too far--or are the studies over dramatizing the issue and "making something out of nothing"?
http://www.forbes.com/health/2007/09/19/tv-health-missteps-forbeslife-cx_avd_0919health.html
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2 comments:
I'm speaking as someone who is not aware of being directly affected by this issue.
Some thoughts I have are 1) that medical conditions run a wide gamut of test results, symptoms and sequelae, so any one 'snapshot' on a program could represent some part of this continuum relatively accurately even if one's personal experience were quite different, and 2) that some mistakes in representation are small and do not compromise or alter the science and medicine of the condition significantly.
That said, public perception can affect funding as much as scientific research does (witness the recent brouhaha in the AMWA bulletin boards regarding ghost authorship, etc.), and if a false representation of a disease or condition causes a drop in funding, then I would likely feel differently.
But in a fictional program, how much accuracy is required? How unethical is it to not be medically accurate if one is portraying fiction? How much ethical responsibility does a fiction writer have when writing about something that has never happened to get medical details accurate?
I'm not sure which feeds which, but this phase of human development seems to thrive on self-diagnosis and being overly (medicated?) This behavior is reinforced by the advertisements we see on TV, almost suggesting to the viewer to tell the physician how to do the job. With medical dramas, perhaps the behavior is enhanced, with "rare" diseases being forefront on the peoples' mind. This is not to say that being wise and conscientious is a bad thing, but I think the world has lost something when physicians are not held in the high regard they once were. Maybe it is the healthcare system in this country.
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