An overdose of news media hype has long been a problem for consumers who want high quality health care but don't want to bounce from health fad to health fad. Naive and uncritical journalists who write about health care issues are a huge source of the hype overdose. So it's great to learn about a Web resource that systematically and thoroughly reviews health news and rates the quality of the stories.

The site is the somewhat stodgily named HealthNewsReview.org. With a foundation grant, it employs a team of medical journalists and physicians to critically review health news in major publications. The stories get rated on a scale of one to five stars, based on how well the following issues were addressed...