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
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
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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