MEN'S HEALTH AMERICA SPECIAL REPORT, PART III
From Media Bias to Legislative Action: A Case
Study
January 21, 2003
The previous MHA Special Report highlights how the media have
provided one-sided and inaccurate coverage to controversial gender health
issues (1).
This Special Report provides an in-depth look at a fact-finding study that was issued by a governmental agency, how the New York Times misrepresented the report, and how the myth nurtured by the NYT story ultimately influenced the federal legislative process.
The GAO Report...
In 1999, three U.S. Senators requested the General Accounting Office (GAO) to gauge the status of women's health research at the National Institutes of Health.
After a thorough investigation, the GAO report reached these conclusions: "In the past decade, NIH has made significant progress in implementing a strengthened policy on including women in clinical research...More than 50% of the participants in clinical research studies that NIH funded in fiscal year 1997 were women." (2).
A closer reading of the GAO report reveals that this conclusion actually soft-pedaled the rapid expansion of women's health programs. The report documented the following facts:
. In 1997, men represented only 37% of all participants in extramural research studies (Figure 1).
. At the National Cancer Institute, which has the largest budget of any of the NIH institutes, male participation was even lower -- 29% (Page 17)
. In the same year, NIH funded 740 female-only studies, compared to only 244 male-only studies (Table 2).
. In 1999, 15.5% of the total research budget was allocated to women's health, compared to only 6.4% for men (Table 3).
...As Reported in the New York Times...
The New York Times decided to run a story on the GAO report. The NYT article, published April 30, 2000, also reported on two other articles that looked at whether research studies analyzed their results separately for men and women.
The Times began the article with this provocative headline: "Research Neglects Women, Studies Find" (3). The article highlighted the fact that few research studies had analyzed their data on men and women separately, a fact that disadvantages both sexes equally.
Sadly, the Times article reinforced the myth that women had been underrepresented in medical research with the statement, "researchers had often reported data from men as if they applied to both men and women." And nowhere did the NYT article even hint at any of the facts from the GAO report that so vividly documented the underrepresentation of men.
Even the most careful reader would have concluded from the headline and accompanying story that women were still being shortchanged by the medical research establishment.
...And Then Picked Up in USA Today...
The New York Times article was followed by a "me too" editorial that appeared on May 5 in USA Today (4). The editorial opened with the shrill headline, "Government-Funded Studies Deny Women Key Health Data." The column failed to present anything resembling a balanced and accurate account of the GAO report. Finally, the editorial went on to give a black eye to the entire health research enterprise:
"Moreover, the habit of overlooking women in medical research is deeply ingrained and hard to shake...And the research hierarchy is still largely dominated by the interests and concerns of white males."
...So Partisan Senators Could Capitalize on the Public Outcry
Responding to the public outcry over the so-called "neglect" of women's health supposedly documented in the GAO report, the Women's Health Office Act was introduced in the 106th Congress (S. 2675). The bill was first read before the Senate on June 6, 2000, just five weeks after the NYT article appeared. The sponsors of the Act included Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland).
The bill did not pass the 106th Congress, maybe because so many other women's health bills were introduced in Congress that same year.
By odd coincidence, Senators Snowe, Harkin, and Mikulski were the same three senators who had originally requested that the GAO conduct the NIH investigation.
The Manipulation of Public Opinion
Many Americans have come to believe that women were routinely excluded from medical research, even though this myth has been repeatedly debunked (5-7).
This Special Report presents a case study of how this myth was repeated, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. The NYT reporter, a physician skilled in the analysis and interpretation of medical data, simply ignored the evidence from the GAO report that challenged the prevailing paradigm of female disadvantage.
Although the GAO report documented the neglect of men's health, an alliance of well-meaning journalists and partisan legislators succeeded in framing the debate in order to control the public's perception of the issue.
Webster's Dictionary defines propaganda as "information, rumors, etc. deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc." So when does a newspaper article become so distorted in its coverage of a fact-finding report that it qualifies more as propaganda than as journalism?
And Who Benefits?
One might wonder who benefits from the misreporting of important gender health issues by the mass media.
Men, who die an average of 5.5 years sooner than women, certainly don't benefit. Children, who must grow up without knowing their daddy, don't gain. And the wives, mothers, and sisters of men who die prematurely don't benefit, either.
So who stands to benefit from the media bias of gender health issues?
-Carey Roberts
References:
1. Men's Health America Special Report: A Double Standard of Media Coverage; Media Bias in Coverage of Gender Health Stories. Rockville, MD, 2003.
2. General Accounting Office: Women's Health: NIH has Increased its Efforts to Include Women in Research. Washington, DC: GAO. Publication No. GAO/HEHS-00-96, May 2000
3. Pear R: Research Neglects Women, Studies Find. New York Times, April 30, 2000.
4. Government-Funded Studies Deny Women Key Health Data. USA Today, May 5, 2000, p. 16A.
5. Dickersin and Min. NIH clinical trials and publication bias. Online J Current Clin Trials. Doc. 50. April 28, 1993.
6. Ungerleider RS, Friedman MA. Sex, trials, and datatapes. J National Cancer Institute 1991; 83: 16-17. 7. Meinert CL et al. Gender Representation in Trials. Controlled Clinical Trials 2000; 21: 462-475.
