After seven years of grading stories, reviewers give health care news what I’d call an F.

In April, 2006, Gary Schwitzer, a former journalism professor and CNN health reporter, assembled a team of doctors, reporters, patients, and a few others to grade health care coverage in newspapers, wire services, on television, and online.

In an article in the current issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, he sums up the results from 2006 until 2013, when he lost funding for the project. "The reviewers graded most stories unsatisfactory on 5 of 10 review criteria: costs, benefits, harms, quality of the evidence, and comparison of the new approach with alternatives," he writes.

"Drugs, medical devices, and other interventions were usually portrayed positively; potential harms were minimized, and costs were ignored."

I'd call that an F.

Schwitzer and his team didn't review every story during that period, but they did look at 1,889 of them, which seems to be a reasonable sample. And before you assume that this former television reporter focused mainly on television stories–which many print journalists treat with contempt–consider this: Only 12% of the stories reviewed came from television. All the rest came from newspapers, news services, and online news sites.

Schwitzer cites several common problems that have often been criticized on the Tracker. One is the reporting of relative risk without disclosing absolute risk. He illustrates the point with a story reporting that aspirin use in women led to a 24% reduction in strokes caused by blood clots. That sounds impressive.

But the absolute figures told a different story: Aspirin led to only two fewer strokes per 1,000 women–which sounds far less impressive. The story made aspirin sound like a significant advance; the study did not.

Schwitzer looked at coverage of observational studies that suggests one thing caused another when they were merely associated; the problems with reporting surrogate markers rather than real endpoints; and failures to explain the tradeoffs and harms and benefits of various drugs and products.

Schwitzer is measured in his assessment, as I suppose one should be when making a careful argument in a medical journal. But I found his report incredibly frustrating–because it marks an end to something that shouldn't come to an end.

I wish that he was closing down his shop not because he lost funding, but because the coverage was now so good that grades were no longer necessary.

And by the way: Why did he lose his funding? Schwitzer is respected and admired by his colleagues, including by me. What happened?

And doesn't anybody out there have a modest amount of money that could help to keep HealthNewsReview.org in business?

-Paul Raeburn