When health-related information is carried through a medium like newspaper, TV, Radio, etc., it is termed health journalism. And those people who do health journalism are health journalists. This information may include health-related discoveries, facts and people awareness.
With rapid development, health degradation is coming up as the greatest threat to human beings. The process of development needs the exploitation of earth’s resources at every stage. While the process, we never assume the harm in the coming future. So, for the time being, it is very necessary to aware peoples of health-related news.
It’s our misconception that health journalism has very little scope. It is because we see very little about it on TV, Newspaper, Radio etc. But does it make health journalism less valuable? No. TRP can’t be considered a tool to quantify the value of health journalism.
It is natural to keep any magazine safe that has some health-related news in it because its value doesn’t decline with time. It doesn’t come often in the newspaper because it has more value than any other news. It has to be accurate, so it is necessary to tag any health-related experts while creating health content.
Any degree of inaccuracy in reporting may lead to great damage. As a health journalist, we must not consider ourselves health advisors. We are mediators of news which we get from health advisors.
As a media person, our responsibility is to collect facts and information related to health and update people with the most recent news. We can interview any renowned doctor and disseminate answers to the most asked questions related to any certain disease. Or just rewrite the answers as an article.
People must know about the feats in the medical context, like the invention of vaccines or medicines. When the government launches health-related policies, health journalists are assigned the biggest role. They have the responsibility to aware people through articles in newspapers, broadcasting interviews, etc.
They launch slogans or rhyming phrases to give an attractive view. For example, Swach Bharat Abhiyan would never succeed without the media’s role in it.
Health journalism is not an easy task; it comes with a set of responsibilities. It takes years of experience to be a health journalist. You need to have numerous links with different doctors, which again demands time and experience. The concerned journalists should be strong enough to sustain the load while being in this field.
The present Covid situation worldwide could be the best example to get a hint of the vulnerability under which a health journalist has to go. Health journalists and doctors are the two engines helping the world tackle this severe pandemic. They are at the forefront, hand in hand with doctors to help them spread awareness worldwide.
Most of us have done self-medication at home only because we could get information through these journalistic doctors. They slammed the government whenever it was needed to make them aware of their responsibilities.
It needs great prowess to handle such a journalism beat, which is impossible without grasping medical knowledge and disseminating that knowledge so that people don’t get any problem knowing it. While reporting, they have to consider the people who are going to read or see it. They should be able to forecast the results which their reporting could arise in the future.
Health journalism is the heart of the whole journalism beat. They need to work day and night to keep themselves updated with the discoveries and inventions on the medical forum. They need to be respected, not underestimated.