May 2005

Caveat Viewer

In Oklahoma City, a popular new local television program based on the ABC network’s “Extreme Makeover” takes women eager for a new look and sets them up with plastic surgeons, Lasik practitioners and cosmetic dentists.

In Baltimore, a local news program airs community service features about new developments in pediatric care and women’s health.

In Washington, D.C., a station gravely reports on the prognosis for Peter Jennings (who airs on a competing channel) and then suggests free CT lung scans at a local hospital for long-time smokers.

What is wrong here?

In the first instance, the makeover artists are licensed health care practitioners and a university medical center paying for the “right” to inflict medically unnecessary and risky cosmetic surgery. In the second instance, two large hospitals — one a university medical center — are buying time on the newscast with the hope of luring high-paying or well insured patients to boost the bottom line in a competitive market. In the third case, viewers are not told that the free lung scans are part of an international clinical trial that by its very nature entails some measure of risk.

It would seem there is another health risk at work here — the local broadcast news media. They not only don’t help educate the public about health and medicine, they actively impede knowledge. So let me suggest some of the things a TV news consumer should consider:

-- Radio or TV newscasters, or other entertainers, who tell you how well they can see now as the result of Lasik surgery were given the procedure free by a doctor whose clinic, you can bet, will be prominently mentioned.

-- Surveys show that most people get most of their information from TV, yet very few local health reporters have any training, and when a reporter refers you to the station’s Web site for more in-depth information, you will likely be linked to commercial sites.

-- A very small percentage, perhaps less than 10 percent, of a local station’s health news is locally produced. Most of it comes from syndicated newsfeeds about “miracle” cures or, worse, corporate or governmental video news releases that can make Jon Stewart’s admitted “fake news” look like the real thing.

The FCC has finally cracked down, telling stations they must now disclose the source of video news releases, but they haven’t said how it must be disclosed or what the penalty is for nondisclosure.

Paradoxically, it is television above all other media that does save lives in weather emergencies or terrorism attacks. But on a day-to-day basis, local television does a disservice by carelessly disseminating misleading, incomplete and commercially tainted health messages.

In our new ownership society, consumers will have to make more decisions about more things, including our health. Yet unlike cars or cell phones, our medical needs are often beyond everyday understanding, and mistakes can be injurious, if not fatal.

There is an obvious need for many more skeptical, unbiased watchdogs on medical breakthroughs, insurance options and individual risk. But I don’t know where they are going to come from, because it turns out that among the people we need to watch out for are the very people we are already watching.

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