Lost in Translation? A Comparison of Cancer-Genetics Reporting in the Press Release and its Subsequent Coverage in Lay Press.

Abstract

Understanding how genetic science is communicated to the lay public is of great import, given that media coverage of genetics is increasing exponentially and that the ways in which discoveries are presented in the news can have significant effects on a variety of health outcomes. To address this issue, this study examines the presentation of genetic research relating to cancer outcomes and behaviors (i.e., prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, smoking and obesity) in both the press release (N = 23) and its subsequent news coverage (N = 71) by using both quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis. In contrast to earlier studies reporting that news stories often misrepresent genetics by presenting biologically deterministic and simplified portrayals (e.g., Mountcastle-Shah et al., 2003; Ten Eych & Williment, 2003), our data shows no clear trends in the direction of distortion toward deterministic claims in news articles. Also, other errors commonly attributed to science journalism, such as lack of qualifying details and use of oversimplified language (e.g., "fat gene") are observed in press releases. These findings suggest that the intermediary press release rather than news coverage may serve as a source of distortion in the dissemination of science to the lay public. The implications of this study for future research in this area are discussed.