Hold the front page Katie’s got married again

Why do some medical stories get covered in the media and others don’t?

It’s a pertinent question this week as debate rages in the blogosphere about Dr Jane Barton. For the uninitiated, she’s a GP in Gosport who has just been found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the GMC.

Dr Barton prescribed “potentially hazardous” levels of sedatives and painkillers to patients at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital in the 1990s. But, despite being found guilty of putting her patients at risk of premature death during that time, she has not been struck off. Instead she can continue to work under certain conditions, which includes a ban on injecting opiates for three years.

There’s been widespread criticism of the decision. The GMC case followed an inquest last year into 10 deaths that concluded that prescribed drugs had been a factor in five. Furthermore, a number of commentators have questioned why Dr Barton didn’t receive the same level of media attention as Dr Andrew Wakefield or Dr Daniel Ubani, the German GP at the centre of the out-of-hours storm.  

It being the web, conspiracy theories abound. Barton ‘survived’ and received less coverage because she’s white and from the right background. Others, like Ubani, haven’t fared so well because of prejudice and racism. The media is only interested in exposing minorities or outsiders because that’s what their small minded readerships want.

If you don’t like that one, there’s another. Barton ‘got off’ because she has friends and family in high places within the medical establishment. Conversations were held behind closed doors, strings were pulled. The media were scared off by the threat of libel.

Like most conspiracy theories, they’re nonsense. There is a more prosaic explanation. Let’s start with the GMC. The fitness to practise panel was clearly swayed by the outpouring of local support for Dr Barton. Supportive comments from current patients have even appeared on comment boards beneath the case’s coverage in the nationals. Despite her serious failings at the Memorial Hospital in the 90s, she’s clearly a popular GP now.  

The GMC’s adjudication powers are being moved to the totally independent Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator next year, effectively signalling the end of self-regulation. It will be interesting to see whether the OHPA would be similarly influenced - I doubt it.  

Fitness to practise panels make their own decisions, and the GMC itself is clearly not happy about this one. New chief executive Niall Dickson suggested she should have been struck off and has instigated a review. Furthermore, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), a supra-regulator if you like, is also having a look. Many forget that doctors now face double jeopardy. The CHRE has the power to refer the case to the High Court if it considers the decision to be unduly lenient.

In short, this case isn’t over yet. Norman Lamb, shadow health secretary for the Lib Dems, is calling for a public inquiry into the matter, though I doubt that will be required.

So, on to the next point, why haven’t the media covered it? Or, to be more accurate (because it has been covered by most of the nationals), why hasn’t it been on TV?

It’s simple - it just hasn’t sufficiently interested their journalists. While many health specialists might think it is an important story about competence, supervision and public protection, when you move into the mainstream media there is only so much ‘space’ for health stories. We’ve had a series of big health stories and if journalists, or more importantly their editors, decide that the Wakefield and Ubani cases have stronger news values (such as scope, relevance and topicality for their audiences) then every other health story gets squeezed. In the wider news agenda, the Iraq Inquiry has been squeezing everything.

Journalism is also a dying profession. Numbers have been slashed in recent years, which results in fewer specialists. Most reporters are now generalists, there’s a lot of churnalism, and effective PR has more sway than ever. ‘Good’ stories get missed. Partly because of this the media acts like a pack, if one credible publication or outlet runs a story, the others dive in. It helps to manage their risk.

So, it really doesn’t take a clandestine conspiracy for meaningful stories get pushed to the back of the queue, sadly just the England football captain getting caught with his pants down or Katie Price getting re-married will be enough.

Tags: GMC, Media coverage