Background: Health-based news reports on television news are frequent and profitable for broadcasters due to the large viewership they command. Issues concerning illnesses with greater mortality risks, such as tumours, are the public’s preferred healthcare broadcast topics. Just as it is the practice in many clinics, the reporters’ primary source of information stems from one or two specialists. The results of these news reports reverberate in medical offices when patients seek specific diagnostic treatments or methods they have seen on television, which serve as a quality measurement of the very reporting. Often television passes along information concerning possible treatments. Evidence-based medicine’s concern is to ensure consumers also have access to quality information that is well verified and generally safer. Objectives: To analyze the calibre of the evidence in the recommendations given in television reports on cancer broadcasts on prominent Brazilian television stations. Methods: We searched for the word ‘cancer’ in the journalism archives of two Brazilian television stations. These two stations were chosen for being the largest in terms of news reporting and viewership. Following the initial search, only material concerning treatment, prevention and new techniques regarding any type of human cancer were selected. All chosen material was registered and viewed by the research group. Subsequently, a search was conducted in The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE and LILACS to gauge the calibre of the evidence of the information and recommendations divulged. For each material, a question was posited and a strategy developed in the literature search. The calibre of the evidence found in the search will be assessed. Results: The topics that factored most into health reports and that were most often repeated in 2007 were related to the prevention of skin and breast cancer. Thirty-six per cent of the news reports concerned treatment of these illnesses, and 32% reported on their prevention. All television news reports were separated, and the searches conducted. The results and conclusions concerning the calibre of the evidence will be available in October 2008.