Bra Helps Fight Breast Cancer

Now that CNN has put Lou Dobbs out to pasture, you'd think that The Most Trusted Name in News would make the reporting of facts -- you know, the practice formerly known as journalism -- the hallmark of its brand. Dream on.

This past Saturday, morning hosts Betty Nguyen and TJ Holmes introduced a segment with CNN's tech guru Mario Armstrong this way: Betty: "There is a bra in fact that will soon be on the market, and the claim is that it can help women fight breast cancer." TJ: "We've got a lot of questions about this one. If it works, you know what, this is one of the greatest inventions ever."

This is what journalistic scrupulousness looks like these days. The anchors were implying, Even if our bosses suspect this story is a crock, they're making us do it anyway, because they think it'll stop you from changing the channel. As long as we cover our butts with words like "claim" and "if," CNN thinks it's perfectly kosher to give some quackery about preventing cancer, like some demagoguery about death panels, four minutes of airtime.

The "Bra helps fight breast cancer" segment turned out to be shameless product placement for Demron, a lightweight radiation shielding material patented by a Florida surgeon and manufactured by his company. The material protects its wearers, among them medical professionals and their patients, from X rays and other radiation. According to the story, if a woman with breast cancer is undergoing brachytherapy -- in which radioactive seeds are implanted in her breast -- then wearing a Demron-lined bra might protect her family and others she comes near from radiation that could be emitted by the pellets in her body.

Whether that's true or not, it's not how the CNN segment was teased. That disparity may be why TJ said to Mario, puzzled, "A lot of women will be listening to this and think, ok, I go get this bra, then that can cut my chances of breast cancer." It may be why Betty interrupted Mario, asking him to "explain to me very clearly, how does it reduce the risk of breast cancer for those who maybe don't have it."

Mario's wan answer: "Yeah, well, see, I think that's still what needs to be worked out, they don't have a defined answer for that just yet."

By the end of the segment, it turns out that the women who could, maybe, hypothetically be helped by this bra are women who "have known risks in the family for breast cancer." Why this bra might help them -- will shielding them from sources of everyday background radiation, like microwaves and color TVs, really prevent their breast cancer genes from being expressed? -- Mario doesn't say. He does say, "A lot of testing still needs to be done, but they got the go ahead to move forward.... But we're talking about high-risk situations... If you were to wear this bra, it may -- hasn't been proven -- but it may be able to help."

"Interesting," says Betty. "This is interesting stuff," echoes TJ. I wish by "interesting" they were dog-whistling to Mario, "You gullible shill." I wish by "interesting" they meant their segment producer and writer to hear, "You reckless hope-mongers." I wish by "interesting" they were signaling to CNN's audience, "We apologize for the insulting, unforgivable way this network just jerked you and your loved ones around by exploiting a life-or-death topic as an excuse for corporate cheerleading."

CNN is far from the only offender. As the independent nonprofit HealthNewsReview.org documents on its website, the morning health news segments on ABC, CBS and NBC regularly and "unquestioningly promote new drugs and new technologies [and] feed the 'worried well' by raising unrealistic expectations of unproven technologies that may produce more harm than good."

On the day before CNN's cancer-preventing bra story ran, University of Minnesota professor Gary Schwitzer, the publisher of Health News Review, told Bob Garfield, host of NPR's On the Media, that a lot of these network TV health stories aren't just bad journalism; they're actually dangerous, malicious, sickening. Garfield asked him if there's any evidence that this kind of coverage -- "this dreck" -- causes real harm. Yes, he said, reports show very clearly the impact of health news coverage, both good and bad, on consumers of that information.

"What you have described for me is a disgrace," Garfield told him. "I believe it is," Schwitzer agreed. "I believe that we have given over the airwaves to these [media] companies that are abusing that privilege and misinforming the public -- inaccurately, in an imbalanced way and incompletely. Yeah, that's how you would define the disgrace."

Health News Review recently announced that after three-and-a-half years, they're not going to review TV health news segments anymore. No matter how bad some of the stories are, the networks just don't care.

Coming up after the break: Tighty-whities help fight prostate cancer. Now this.

This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.

 

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[Shirley Fisk]

11/17/09
3:35am
Alexandria, VA

The bra that prevents cancer. Well, they could just as easily produce a hat from the demron material and claim it prevents brain cancer.

[northstar11]

"Yeah, well, see, I think that's still what needs to be worked out, they don't have a defined answer for that just yet."

[susanlno]

Maybe, but it'll never be as good as plain ol' aluminum foil for keeping the aliens from taking over your brain waves.

[Paul Pagnini]

Thank you for your insightful report. What do you expect from a network whose lead medical correspondent lowers himself to perform "ambush" interviews (stalking a previous Michael Jackson anesthesiologist- waiting out front until he exited his house; then rushed him with a camera crew and microphone). Do you think they ran this story by any of their so called medical experts?

[classicbydesign]

Thank you for your review of this bad piece of journalism. Before women go out and buy this, they should know that: 1) wearing this during a procedure where the radiation is inside you will cause more radiation dose to the breast tissue because the shield will reflect some of the radiation back into the entire breast; 2) that it will not protect family and friends from the radiation when high energy gamma emitters are used to treat (which is usually the case); 3) it will not protect you from cosmic radiation (a component of background radiation) because that is also very high energy. In order for this to protect you from high energy radiation, it would need to be a couple inches of lead. Ouch. I'm a certified medical health physicist in the medical radiation safety field for over 30 years - don't buy this.

[BobHiggins]

Can a jockstrap spin off be far behind?

[VirginiaJeff]

I really wish Ted Turner would get one more chance at running CNN.

[beebletree]

Cool, where can I get one.

[SeaBlood]

Last night on my local news station, there was a big "news" story. It said that there is a new breakthrough, surgical treatment for breast cancer! I listened attentively. Turns out, it was a new surgery for rebuilding breast tissue after mastectomy. Big deal! So the woman still dies of cancer but her breasts will be nice and plump in the coffin. How did CNN miss that one?