Excerpt from the Paula Zahn Now program on CNN from last Wednesday, April 20:

"Reporter" Sharon Collins had the “People in the News” profile of a pediatric heart surgeon.

Zahn’s intro said the surgeon “performs small miracles for desperate parents.”

Collins, early in the piece said, “That man is Mohan Reddy or as many parents call him, the miracle man.”

Collins question: “When people call you miracle man, how does that make you feel?”
Reddy answer: “I tell them miracles are only done by gods.”

Collins track: "But in the surgical theater, Reddy is a god."

Collins question: “I’m looking at this tiny baby with little bitty hands and you operated on his heart. Weren’t you scared even a little bit?”
Reddy answer: “No I really was not scared.”

Late in the piece, Collins said Reddy “doesn’t like being called a miracle man.”

Paula Zahn tag: “He may not want to be called a miracle man but as you can see, he is one.”

If you're scoring at home, that's Miracles 6, Gods 2, Audience 0. This is fawning sensationalism of the worst kind.

This story appeared in my local paper today: "The first attempt at gene therapy for Alzheimer's patients appeared to significantly delay worsening of the disease in a few people who have tested it so far. Scientists took skin cells from eight patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's and modified the genes to secrete a protein found in healthy brains called nerve growth factors or NGF. They then implanted the NGF-producing skin cells directly onto Alzheimer's-injured spots. Six patients were tracked for almost two years. Tests found their rate of cognitive decline slowed by 36 percent to 51 percent, better than is usually seen with medication."

How do I criticize thee? Let me counts the ways.

1. This brief omitted the critical cautionary second sentence of the original AP story: "Far more research is needed to see if the experimental treatment, which requires a form of brain surgery, really helps."

2. It omitted the following cautionary quote from the original AP story: "These results need to be interpreted with cautious optimism," said William Thies of the Alzheimer's Association. With so few patients in the study, "it's really impossible to tell whether the benefit was due to the treatment or natural fluctuation in symptoms," he said.

3. It omitted the following cautionary quote from a researcher involved in the work: "It's cautious optimism with a big C. It can't be a cure, obviously ... but maybe it'll do something."

At a panel I organized and moderated entitled "Creeping Commercialism in TV News" at the Broadcast Education Association conference in Las Vegas yesterday, WFLA-TV Tampa news director Forrest Carr called for FCC regulations requiring stations to disclose any commercial source of guest interviews, video, or on-air information.

He said what the FCC recently stated regarding video news releases disclosure (see April 15 entry on this site) must be duplicated and expanded when it comes to news show or talk show guests representing drug companies or other interests. Disclosure, he says, must be legislated. It is the only way to turn around an ugly situation in television news.

Carr also constructively criticized my panel title, saying there's nothing "Creeping" about commercialism in TV news. It is, he said, already rampant.

The Post-Standard of Syracuse profiles a local TV station that used a Medicare video news release in February.

How did it happen? The general manager says since they got it from the CNN Newsource news feed, they thought it was legitimate news. CNN's Newsource transmits not only news but news releases to subscribers around the country. He says the Medicare VNR was not clearly marked as such. The GM also said his station added its own narration to the Medicare-provided video.

But John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, a nonprofit media watchdog group, says taking someone else's reporting and pretending it's your own is plagiarism at the very least.