The public may have problems this week sorting through news articles about a government task force's opposition to routine mammograms for women under 50 and articles about breast cancer survivors touting the benefits of early mammograms. But to properly interpret the news, the public must learn to balance the research with the anecdotal evidence says University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Associate Professor of English Cynthia Ryan, Ph.D.
Ryan studies how breast cancer is portrayed in the media and is the author of a forthcoming book on the rhetoric of breast cancer in popular women's magazines.
"I think that news coverage on this recent debate has been fairly effective, but as expected, there is room for readers to misinterpret what they are reading," says Ryan, who points to two New York Times articles published on the same day: one dealing with the findings of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) arguing that routine mammograms should begin after age 49, and another article offering one woman's stance that early mammograms save lives.
"I'd say the media is doing a decent job of covering both sides of the debate," says Ryan. "What can be problematic for readers, however, is the seeming contradiction between two polarized perspectives: either keep the screening guidelines the same or change them.
"Consumers are best able to make sound decisions about their health when these polarized messages are integrated and reflect the complexity of the disease," she says. "It's not an either-or conversation."