--Paul Doering
Sound biblical? Maybe. But health is one of those things that seems older than time. It's always going to need research and money and media attention.
Today my health and fitness writing class had the pleasure of participating in a lecture with University of Florida pharmacy professor Paul Doering. Professor Doering told us about the people and practices the fuel the news machine when it comes to health reporting.
"In the news and entertainment industry, nothing happens by chance," Doering said.
What he meant? There are no stories out there relating to health that are purely happenstance. The big companies and medical communities out there have their own media power that lets them reach the masses when and how they choose.
He even talked about endorsements from pharmeceutical companies that encouraged experts on their payroll to deny the effectiveness of generic prescription drugs in favor of the name-brand kind they sell. Seems like everyone has an angle.
It was interesting, as a journalist, to learn just how closely the medical field and the media have to work. Knowledge, it seems, is half the importance when it comes to public health, and the media is the biggest purveyor of this knowledge.
I'm pretty interested in health writing, and from his talk today I learned just how rough the competition is in that market. Not among journalists clamoring for the same story, necessarily, but among the tons of health outlets trying to get their story or their news release into the same few media channels.
Sounds tough, but I dig it.
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