JRN185 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Peter Wilby, Peanut Butter, Periodontitis
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Published on 29 Apr 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
PCC
JRN - 185
Newspaper Publishing
● Health and fitness:
○ The growth in health news and related lifestyle and wellness reports has been
unprecedented over the past decade
○ National fascination with our physical wellbeing has risen as quickly as our life
expectancy
○ Exploiting fear and the quest for eternal life
○ Dedicated articles on the subject are given entire pages of the national press while
the news pages are filled with health-related studies
○ Hypochondria may seem rife
○ Definitely consumes viewers in the newspapers
○ There is a competition for the health or medical correspondent
○ The reporting varies from 'miracle treatments' to nutritional and behavioral
therapy
○ Discussing 'problems' from weight management to sexual performance
○ Builds from articles published in medical journals, health industry arguments,
fitness gurus 'theories' and the sufferers' personal stories and others who have
triumphed over physical or emotional hardship
○ The Daily Mail leads the way with a regularly 16 pages long weekly Good Health
supplement
○ Attracts pill ads, snoring and thinning hair remedies, weight-loss, facial and pelvic
muscle control, and hearing aids
● Peter Wilby
○ Former Independent on Sunday editor and now a Guardian press columnist
○ Looked at one issue of the Mail on a Good Health Day and noticed news stories
about chocolate being healthy for your heart
○ A diet pill to make you feel full as soon as you start eating
○ Gum disease to raise the risk of cancer
○ A third of babies whose parents smoke at home end up in hospital
○ Find underpants in Good Health Wilby to regulate blood pressure, tree bark to
alleviate arthritis, a herb that can relieve ear infection and peanut butter to avoid
hiccups
○ Medical profession is highly critical of journalism in health, worried about
generating false hopes for the chronically ill, raising expectations for new
medications or therapies, and exaggerating recorded 'breakthroughs'
○ Most noticeable field that reveals the science coverage imperfections, in which
both scientists and journalists have played their part