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!
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
Comments
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Quinn Eastman
February 23, 2009 at 5:34 pmIsn’t cosmetic surgery generally NOT covered by insurance?
At least they didn’t plug the company that makes the pencil-sized fat sucker.
Okinawa
February 26, 2009 at 2:49 pmWhat 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”.
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