On this date in 1985 I was between trips to Louisville, assigned by CNN to cover artificial heart experiments at a Humana hospital there. It was a media circus. Journalists were herded to a convention center miles from the hospital, fed several-times-a-day briefings by surgeons (usually optimistic), and given handout pictures or video of the experimental subjects tethered to the drive device for the Jarvik-7 heart. Much coverage was sensational, lacked context, and failed to discuss cost and policy ramifications.
1984 had just ended with more sensational coverage of a baboon heart transplant into "Baby Fae" at Loma Linda University medical center in California.
1985 would bring more pack journalism with news of President Reagan's colon cancer surgery. Hype hit fullspeed with coverage of National Cancer Institute research on interleukin-2. A central figure in both stories was Dr. Steven Rosenberg, Reagan's physician and IL-2 researcher.
I've often thought that 1984-85 was a landmark year -- a turning point -- in the coverage of medical science news. Network news, TIME and Newsweek covers, radio news, and major newspapers fed from the same trough during this feast of high-fluff, low-substance news coverage. CNN may have been the worst culprit because it repeated the stories over and over, hour after hour on both CNN and CNN Headline News. Other media caved in to the competitive pressure. One newspaper reporter told me he slept in and ordered room service and filed his Louisville artificial heart stories from his hotel room based on what he heard in CNN's live coverage of medical briefings that carried such personal details as subjects' blood chemistry and urine output.
Many of the bad journalistic habits exhibited so publicly so often in that year live on today. Remember: the Raelian cloning claims coverage was at its peak exactly two years ago.
Posted by schwitz at January 3, 2005 03:45 PM