Media Influence on the Perceived Safety of Dietary Supplements for Children

This study was aimed at investigating how Spanish media reinforce a positive image of dietary supplements in the treatment of  children, potentially leading to harmful health attitudes and behaviors.

The researchers conducted a quantitative content analysis of 912 news articles published between 2015 and 2021 in Spanish media outlets discussing dietary supplements for children. They used a frequency analysis and a proportion comparison to analyze variables such as the reach of news, tone of news, mentions of health professional consultation, association with natural products, media specialization, intertextuality, and headline mentions.

The study found a 60% increase in publications discussing dietary supplements for children during the study period. The content analysis indicates that these articles predominantly present dietary supplements in a positive light, often without robust scientific evidence. Furthermore, many do not emphasize the need for medical consultation, which may contribute to unsupervised consumption of supplements, particularly among minors. This highlights the critical importance of professional guidance when considering dietary supplements for children. Additionally, the frequent emphasis on the “natural” attributes of these products raises concerns regarding consumer perceptions and potential safety risks.

The authors concluded that their study reveals a problem regarding the portrayal of dietary supplements for children in Spanish media. The overly optimistic image, lack of scientific basis, and failure to recommend medical supervision may contribute to unsupervised consumption among minors, risking their health due to misinformed decisions influenced by media portrayal.

I would add that this problem exists not just for children and not just in Spain. It has long been noted to put consumers of all ages and from all countries at risk. The authors kindly cite our own study from 2006 that concluded: “UK national newspapers frequently publish articles on CATs for cancer. Much of this information seems to be uncritical with a potential for misleading patients.”

Even several years before that, my late friend Thomas Weimayr and I published this study in the BMJ:

The media strongly influences the public’s view of medical matters.¹ Thus, we sought to determine the frequency and tone of reporting on medical topics in daily newspapers in the United Kingdom and Germany. The following eight newspapers were scanned for medical articles on eight randomly chosen working days in the summer of 1999: the Times, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian in the United Kingdom, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, and Die Welt in Germany. All articles relating to medical topics were extracted and categorised according to subject, length, and tone of article (critical, positive, or neutral).

A total of 256 newspaper articles were evaluated. The results of our analysis are summarised in the table. We identified 80 articles in the German newspapers and 176 in the British; thus, British newspapers seem to report on medical topics more than twice as often as German broadsheets. Articles in German papers are on average considerably longer and take a positive attitude more often than British ones. Drug treatment was the medical topic most frequently discussed in both countries (51 articles (64%) in German newspapers and 97 (55%) in British). Surgery was the second most commonly discussed medical topic in the UK newspapers (32 articles; 18%). In Germany professional politics was the second most commonly discussed topic (11 articles; 14%); this category included articles about the standing of the medical profession, health care, and social and economic systems—that is, issues not strictly about treating patients.

Because our particular interest is in complementary medicine, we also calculated the number of articles on this subject. We identified four articles in the German newspapers and 26 in the UK newspapers. In the United Kingdom the tone of these articles was unanimously positive (100%) whereas most (3; 75%) of the German articles on complementary medicine were critical.

This analysis is, of course, limited by its small sample size, the short observation period, and the subjectivity of some of the end points. Yet it does suggest that, compared with German newspapers, British newspapers report more frequently on medical matters and generally have a more critical attitude (table). German newspapers frequently discuss medical professional politics, a subject that is almost totally absent from newspapers in the United Kingdom.

The proportion of articles about complementary medicine seems to be considerably larger in the United Kingdom (15% v 5%), and, in contrast to articles on medical matters in general, reporting on complementary medicine in the United Kingdom is overwhelmingly positive. In view of the fact that both healthcare professionals and the general public gain their knowledge of complementary medicine predominantly from the media, these findings may be important.²,³

25 years later, the call on journalists to behave more responsibly when reporting about so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) is as loud and clear as it is neglected and ignored.