Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
Someone stop me if you ever hear me say that I’ve seen the worst TV health news piece. The bottom keeps dropping.
This piece is a contender for bottom-dweller.
(Note: before you can actually enjoy the piece, you’ll have to watch a CBS promo in this clip for all the awards they’ve won. And you’ll see at the end their tagline, “Very Good News.” This piece, I warn you, will not win an award and was NOT very good news.)
Let’s recap:
A young woman whom the anchorman calls “healthy…gorgeous” but who wants to rid herself of a tiny fat pouch in her belly gets lunchtime liposuction. The surgeon comes on the set with her to chat with the anchorman. But in more than 5 minutes (an eternity in TV news!), they fail to discuss:
• evidence
• how widely the costs vary from the $3,000 the promoting-surgeon cited
• whether insurance pays for it.
Viewers should ask themselves: if this “healthy, gorgeous” young woman wanted to have a little fat pouch removed and if she were in your insurance pool and if insurance covered it, would you want your premiums to go up as a result?
Why don’t we have news stories about that?
That would be journalism. This was free advertising: 5 minutes worth!
What is our nation becoming? One day we will have to really take a look at what we’ve become…I put part of the blame on our “celebrity culture”.
We look for more critical analysis of FDA expedited approval of a new drug like this.
Five-star story on small study that tries to counter large body of evidence on soy supplements for hot flashes.
Our reviewers, including a leading women’s health clinician-researcher, felt this piece would have been benefited from more data and context.
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Quinn Eastman posted on February 23, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Isn’t cosmetic surgery generally NOT covered by insurance?
At least they didn’t plug the company that makes the pencil-sized fat sucker.