Which morning show can have the worst health segment this week?

Not to be outdone by the CBS Early Show, ABC's Good Morning America offered its own less-than-prizewinning health segment this week, "Smallest Hearing Aid Yet: How Tiny Device Is Changing Lives."

Here's Diane Sawyer holding up a model of the hearing aid, complete with free tight shot of the product's brand name.

On HealthNewsReview.org, reviewer Andrew Holtz wrote:

It is hard to find anything in this report about a small hearing aid that distinguishes it from an advertisement. Indeed, people with hearing loss would get a more balanced presentation by viewing the manufacturer's web site.

From the first line, in which the anchor refers to a totally unrelated study of hearing loss in children, to the gushing endorsement of the "amazing" device in the last line, the story sells the product. Viewers are not told that the only expert who appears in the piece is an adviser to the manufacturer. They are not told that this "new" device has been on the market for more than two years nor that the manufacturer described the device as equivalent to several other hearing aids in its application for FDA approval.

As if abject failure to provide an objective review of this hearing aid weren't bad enough, the reporter and anchor go on to editorialize that the expensive device should be covered by insurance. Insurance coverage would undoubtedly boost sales, which one might almost believe was the purpose of this naïve and one-sided report.

What a terrific media environment in which to discuss health care reform: an environment in which ABC lets a physician-promoter get away with predicting - unchallenged - that "one day almost everyone will wear a hearing aid that no one can see."

But this is part of the fantasy-land of health news on network TV morning shows.