Abstract
The Council for Mass Media in Finland is a self-regulatory board of journalism that evaluates complaints concerning the execution of the Finnish Journalism Guidelines. Between 1995 and early 2002 26 verdicts given by the Council dealt with matters related to the private lives or work of medical professionals. These cases were analyzed in order to determine the limits for acceptability in treatment of physicians in the media. Four key themes were identified: the rights of an interviewee, the right for a subject of negative publicity to defend a physician’s right to privacy and media impact on patients’ health choices. Results: patient-doctor confidentiality may pose a challenge to a doctor’s right to defend him/herself publicly; a doctor’s profession should not be mentioned if it has no relevance to the event that is being reported; the media may well challenge existing medical paradigms.
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Ahlmén-Laiho, U., Suominen, S., Järvi, U., Tuominen, R. (2012). Complaints Made to the Council for Mass Media in Finland Concerning the Personal and Professional Lives of Doctors. In: Eriksson-Backa, K., Luoma, A., Krook, E. (eds) Exploring the Abyss of Inequalities. WIS 2012. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32850-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32850-3_9
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