A dispute between US News & World Report and the San Francisco city attorney's office over the media company's well-known but increasingly scrutinized system for ranking hospitals and other health care institutions has in recent weeks become a an all-out legal battle.
San Francisco City Attorney. David Chiu issued two subpoenas to the media company earlier this month. The first demanded answers about the company's hospital classification process. The outlet also makes money from healthcare facilities, including through the sale of “badges” that high-scoring institutions can and often do place on their websites and other branding materials.
The second subpoena demanded internal business records that could reveal more about US News' rating process and whether financial relationships with hospitals are a factor.
On Tuesday, US News responded by filing a federal lawsuit against Chiu, denouncing his subpoenas as a violation of the First Amendment and an attack on the free press. He asked the court to issue an injunction blocking the subpoenas and order the city to compensate the company for its legal fees and other undetermined costs associated with the dispute.
The company argued that Chiu's queries are based solely on the fact that he disagrees with its rankings of the country's “Best Hospitals,” which it claims are based on a public methodology.
Chiu's lawsuits amount to “viewpoint-based discrimination” against an established media company by a government official, he said, and violate California law that protects journalists' unpublished work from government scrutiny.
“It is flatly unconstitutional for the City Attorney to harass US News because of their differing views on these rankings; Their growing harassment must be put to an end,” the company's complaint states.
Chiu, in a statement provided to the Times, strongly disputed those claims.
“It's ironic that US News claims its speech has been frozen, when the purpose of the company's lawsuit is to chill and impede a legitimate government investigation into possible illegal business practices,” Chiu said.
“Despite US News' stated commitment to transparency, the company has spent months dodging difficult questions about its undisclosed financial ties to the hospitals it ranks. “This lawsuit is another baseless attempt to avoid these questions and a waste of judicial resources,” Chiu said. “US News is not above the law, and its bullying litigation tactics will not deter us from defending patients and consumers.”
Major ranking systems from US News and others have faced criticism in recent years, with higher education institutions and prominent officials arguing that they face pressure to focus on criteria based on status and rankings rather than overall performance and attention to skills. needs of their communities.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona called university rankings “a joke” in August 2022, and several top law schools, including UC Berkeley and Stanford, UCLA and UC Irvine, announced they would boycott US News rankings that same year. Several medical schools, including Stanford, Columbia and Harvard, made similar announcements last year.
US News has defended its process for rating institutions as tested, trusted and sound, and its complaint calls its hospital rankings, which it has provided for more than three decades, “a valuable and trusted public resource for individuals and families who make decisions.” criticism on medical topics”. take care of themselves and their loved ones.”
“Each member of the editorial team works full time on health rankings, including hospital rankings,” the lawsuit states. “Members of the editorial team are not involved in the sales of any products or services and income considerations do not affect the rankings in any way.”
The company's lawsuit says tens of millions of people visit its website each month “in search of research and guidance,” and calls Chiu's subpoenas a threat not only to that guidance but to “all media platforms and news organizations” in the country.
“The city attorney threatens invasive, sweeping, and onerous raids against a news organization simply because he disagrees with an editorial viewpoint, specifically, US News' rankings and methodology,” the lawsuit states. company. “Independence of editorial determinations, free from commercial considerations, is a fundamental principle of journalism, to which US News proudly adheres.”
Chiu first demanded answers about the company's classification process in a scathing letter his office sent to the company (and posted publicly on its own website) in June.
US News “presents itself as an expert in ranking hospitals,” the letter said, “but medical experts have recently expressed concern that [its] The rankings suffer from poor and opaque methodology, mislead those who use them, and create perverse incentives for hospitals across the country.”
Chiu also took to social media platform [and] “Undisclosed financial relationships with high-ranking hospitals.” The ranking system, she said, encourages hospitals to invest “in specialties that accumulate the most points rather than primary care or other valuable specialties.”
Chiu wrote that consumers trusted the ratings without understanding that the company has “financial relationships” with the institutions it rates. He said the rankings “appear to be biased toward providing treatment to white, wealthy patients, to the detriment of poorer, sicker or more diverse populations.”
Among other things, Chiu accused US News of potentially violating California laws and current federal guidelines for advertisers. The company responded with its own letter the following month, rejecting Chiu's claims as “misplaced” and defending its classification process.
Chiu has objected to the outlet calling its rankings “authoritative,” based on “world-class data and technology” and useful to families seeking the best medical care. In its complaint, the company called those claims “subjective opinions” and said they are “widely supported” by facts and multiple third-party reviews of its work, and are also not subject to legal challenge.
Following the exchange of letters last summer, the company said it believed the issue was resolved, until Chiu's subpoenas arrived this month, forcing it to defend itself (and other media companies in the state) in court.
Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for Chiu's office, said in a statement to the Times that the office “in no way dictates what US News publishes or the endorsements it makes,” but is simply seeking more information about how he reaches those conclusions.
“US News is trying to avoid answering difficult questions by obscuring the issues and making baseless claims that the company's constitutional rights are threatened by the mere act of asking questions,” Kwart said.
Chiu is within his authority to issue subpoenas to force the company to answer his questions, Kwart said, and in doing so he is serving “the best interest of patients in California.”
