When a public figure shares a cancer diagnosis, the news coverage is often missing key details that can leave readers—particularly those dealing with cancer themselves—confused, anxious or even misinformed, according to research published Feb. 26 in ESMO Real World Data and Digital Oncology.
The study used Google News to analyze articles published between 2010 and 2020 that mentioned cancer. Of the 4,135 articles identified, 254 mentioned a public figure, such as an actor, TV news personality, politician or athlete, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Many of the news articles, 14.5%, did not mention the type of cancer the public figure had and nearly 38% did not mention the type of treatment the person received or was expected to receive.
The majority of the articles, 78%, also did not provide any scientific or educational information alongside the story about cancer—an issue that those who work with patients, both in the oncology and mental health spaces, hope can be remedied.
“The lack of granular details regarding a public figure’s diagnosis or treatment with cancer may create a sense of uncertainty regarding cancer,” David Benjamin, a medical oncologist at Hoag Family Cancer Institute in Newport Beach, California, and study author, explains.
Benjamin says the lack of critical details may create a misperception that all cancers are treated the same and create anxiety and an unwarranted fear of the unknown for readers.
The study also highlighted that when more specific details were provided, important caveats were still missing. Surgery was mentioned most frequently, followed by chemotherapy alone—in 26.4% and 7.9% of stories respectively. Immunotherapy, which is now commonly used for many different types of cancer, was only mentioned in three stories.
Prognosis was often left out of these stories as well, and when it was mentioned, it was most commonly because the public figure had died (20.5% of stories) or had what was considered incurable cancer or a very poor prognosis (16.9%).
Benjamin points out that public figures have a right to privacy and may not feel comfortable sharing personal details about their health publicly. Yet for those dealing with a cancer diagnosis themselves, the lack of detail may create more questions.
“My practice is in genitourinary cancers such as prostate, bladder, kidney and testicular cancer. When a public male figure is diagnosed with or dies from prostate cancer, some men I care for may ask me what kind of treatment the public figure received or why the individual died,” he explains, noting the ambiguity can create more uncertainty for patients reading these articles.
Caroline Dorfman, a clinical psychologist who works for Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina, says that while news coverage can be misleading, it can also be helpful for people with cancer to read stories about well-known figures going through similar struggles.
“For a lot of patients, seeing that someone else has cancer can seem quite normalizing for them,” she explains. “A lot of the work I do is with young adults with cancer. With people like Kate Middleton [the Princess of Wales, who revealed that she was diagnosed with cancer in March 2024], we don’t always get the specifics, but for a lot of young patients, it helped normalize that cancer was on the rise in young people.”
One of the limitations of the study was that it did not examine the many ways consumers get news these days, including social media.
Dorfman points out that even if people with cancer are trying to avoid cancer-related news and anxiety-inducing stories, the coverage may find them via Instagram or TikTok.
She stresses the importance of being a critical consumer of this type of news. For patients, that means not “extrapolating from the article to their own situation.”
Dorfman says news coverage could stop misleading information from spreading by providing links to reputable sources that outline the specifics of treatment, such as the American Cancer Society, and by emphasizing the diversity in cancer diagnoses and treatments.
“Having some sort of disclaimer that this is one particular person’s experience and if you have questions about your own experience, talk to your medical provider, could be helpful to patients,” she says.
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