The researchers announced that 47% of tested meat was found to be contaminated and 52% of the contaminated samples were drug resistant. Clearly, this news is extremely worrisome. My initial reaction to this article was anger. I saw this as another example of a public health category where the US was outspending almost every country on the globe, but not seeing the results. How could we claim to be such a developed country and lag so far behind on the safety of out our meat products? However, upon closer examination, I found several glaring problems with the articles themselves that frightened me even more.
The first problem with the headline published by Fox News is that half of the contaminated samples are drug resistant, not half of all of the samples. How can a "reliable" news source publish a title of a headlined article with such a mathematical error. The difference between "nearly half" and 24% is enormous. How did this error slip past the editors?
Despite this math error, there is another even larger problem that I discovered in the article. The study conducted by these researchers examined only 136 samples of meat. To declare that half of the meat in the US in infected based on this extremely limited sample size seems fairly far fetched to me. There are more than 136 portions of meat consumed in one restaurant in one night, much less the entire country.
I wonder how carefully these news sources inspect releases by the AP before publishing them. It also concerns me how the headline so poorly reflects the actual study being done. Especially on the topics concerning public health, the spread of misinformation can be very costly. The meat industry provides nutrition for much of the country, in addition to creating income and jobs for many people. A simple "math mistake" in this headline could yield very costly health results for these people. In addition, when studies like this create a startling effect, but then are later retracted, the effect of a real scare can be lost on the population when something does need to be done.
How can this misinformation in the media be dealt with? As we have discussed in class, the communication of information in public health is more important than anything else in the field. Misinformation like this can do unimaginable harm for many years to come. What can those in the public health field do now to prevent this nightmare situation from happening in the future? What can we do to limit the damage that has already been done?
This is certainly a disturbing commentary on how the inaccuracy of the media can worsen health concerns. I remember hearing that often the triumphs of public health were the ones that went silent, while the disasters were publicized. Now, however, this makes even the triumphs of public health, making the majority of our meat safe, into a disaster (or at least worse than it is). By widely publicizing stories like this, it will desensitize the majority of the population to hearing about problems in food contamination, so that when there is a legitimate problem, they are less likely to put pressure on policy makers.
ReplyDeleteI think that the only way to really hold media outlets accountable for their stories and validity is to respond when they have bad reporting so that they know that not only do people read their stories, but critically examine them for content.