How do the media report cancer research? A study of the UK's BBC website

Abstract

This study examined cancer research stories on the BBC web archive (July 1998-June 2006). There were about 260 BBC stories per year, of which about 170 were classed as relevant to reports of cancer research. The stories focused heavily on breast cancer, and over one-third of them mentioned this (compared with a cancer disease burden of 13%); the next most covered sites were lung and prostate cancers, although the former was much less mentioned than its cancer disease burden of almost 20% would have suggested. The focus of the stories was often on new or improved drugs or vaccines (20% of stories), with lifestyle choices (12%), genetic developments (9%), and food and drink (8%) also featuring fairly prominently. The BBC stories cited about 1380 research papers that could be identified as journal articles. About three-quarters of the cited papers were in the field of cancer. The papers of these authors came from over 60 countries, and 40% were from the United Kingdom and 36% from the United States. UK cancer research was heavily overcited, by about 6:1, relative to its presence in world oncology research and US research was cited about in proportion. That of most other countries, especially Japan, Germany, and Austria, was relatively undercited. These cited papers also acknowledged more funding bodies. Most of the BBC stories were put in context by external commentators, of whom the large majority was from the UK's cancer research charities.

Figure 1

Annual numbers of BBC stories on ‘cancer+research’ or ‘cancer+study’ from July 1998 to June 2006. Stories of high relevance (rel=3) are shown in black.

Figure 2

Correlation between the relative burden of different cancers (DALYs, 2002, WHO estimate) and the numbers of BBC stories mentioning the different cancer sites, 1998–2006.

Figure 3

Variation of relative presence of four types of story among BBC cancer research stories of 3-year moving averages. (Environmental and lifestyle stories were relatively constant at 5 and 12%, respectively.)

Figure 4

Comparison between percentage presence (fractional counts) of 18 countries in papers cited by BBC stories and their presence in oncology research (2000–2004). Solid diagonal shows equal relationship; dashed diagonal shows relationship expected when UK contributions to papers are removed from the international pool.

Figure 5

Cumulative distribution of research levels (1=clinical and 4=basic) of papers cited by BBC (solid line) compared with world oncology papers, 2000–2004 (dashed line).

Figure 6

Distribution of LOG function for potential citation impact for papers cited by the BBC (black bars) and world oncology papers, 2000–2004 (striped bars).

Figure 7

Distribution of numbers of funding bodies acknowledged on papers cited by BBC cancer stories, 1998–2006, and on a sample of 2115 oncology papers from 2003.

Figure 8

A plot of percentage presence of UK cancer funding organisations as commentators on BBC stories of cancer research, 1998–2006, against their contribution to UK cancer research funding, 2000–2001.