Daily Source Bias Check: Prevention Magazine

Factual Reporting: Mixed - Not always Credible or Reliable


CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE

Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information, therefore fact checking and further investigation is recommended on a per article basis when obtaining information from these sources. See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources.

  • Overall, we rate Prevention Magazine a moderate pseudoscience source and Mixed for factual reporting due to not always supporting the consensus of science.

Detailed Report

Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180

History

Founded in 1950, Prevention Magazine their associated website is an American healthy lifestyle magazine featuring articles about health conditions, wellness, food and nutrition, weight loss, fitness, and beauty. The current editor is Jane Francisco.

Read our profile on United States government and media.

Funded by / Ownership



Prevention is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which is an American mass media and business information conglomerate based in New York City. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston ChronicleCosmopolitan, and Esquire. Prevention generates revenue through magazine sales and subscriptions as well as advertising.

Analysis / Bias

In review, Prevention Magazine produces original content on health and wellness. They provide health advice through short articles and occasionally listicles. Headlines and wording are often low biased such as this Does Wearing Gloves Reduce Your COVID-19 Risk?  This story is properly sourced to the CDC. While Prevention Magazine will never be accused of being a hard science source they do support pro-science points of view on vaccinations and climate change. However, when it comes to GMOs they frequently publish alarmist articles that do not align with the consensus of science. For example in this story, “Need Another Reason To Avoid GMOs?” the website promotes the debunked 2012 study by Gilles-Éric Séralini, which was retracted from the Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal the “following year after a detailed review following criticism from scientists and regulatory bodies, which found a pattern of bias and design flaws. The study used cancer-prone rats, shoddy controls, and the data cherry-picked (e.g. data showed some rats fed glyphosate had few tumors, which the authors did not highlight in their commentary).” This story has remained on the website since 2012. Finally, Prevention Magazine promotes fad diets such as this: This Man Ate Only Potatoes for 1 Year and Lost 117 Pounds. While they do question the safety of a potato only diet, the article mostly highlights the benefits of a diet that is not nutritionally balanced.

From an editorial standpoint, Prevention does not really cover politics, however, they frequently cover the lifestyles of people associated with the left such as Michelle Obama and Al Gore.

In general, most information is factual, however, there are instances as indicated above, where they stray from the consensus of science.

Overall, we rate Prevention Magazine a moderate pseudoscience source and Mixed for factual reporting due to not always supporting the consensus of science. (D. Van Zandt 3/13/2020)

Source: https://www.prevention.com/


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