Starting Monday, a new Web site plans to rate the way top newspapers, magazines and other media outlets, including The Associated Press, cover health issues.
Access to the site and its findings, HealthNewsReview, http://www.healthnewsreview.org/ is free and open to consumers.
It was created by University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer, who said the hope is the site will help consumers "improve their critical thinking about claims in health care."
A team of 20 reviewers from universities and clinics across the country will rate articles on a scale of one to five stars and post comments.
While Schwitzer said he thinks the quality of health care journalism is improving, it still sometimes falls short. He said stories sometimes fail to spell out such things as the availability of a new treatment or the strength of the evidence behind a new study.
