Perhaps because I never went to journalism school I missed the class they must give to neophyte reporters on emergency use of stereotypes.
Because when it comes to health reporting, cliches abound. In tabloid land, bugs are always killers, when they are not super, of course. This week’s “new hope for sufferer’s of X” is next week’s “killer drug – the facts they tried to cover up”. Seriously ill patients are inevitably “fighting for their life” and if they recover they are always described as having “beaten the disease”.
Do you lose the fight against cancer (or “crash out”, which seem to be this week’s Olympic metaphor for losing?) I much prefer the description by playwright and prostate cancer “victim” Alan Bennett, who wrote in his memoir Untold Stories of how the reality was closer to dodging cancer "There was nothing adversarial in it for me. Once I had the diagnosis and treatment I just hoped to edge by and go unnoticed … I seem to have done so little it didn't amount to much more than keeping my fingers crossed." Sounds like Alan was not a “brave” patient as required by the media
But such notions are anathema to tabloid editors of and producers of prime time TV. In fact if you banned the words killer, hope and breakthrough there would be some serious gaps in the Today Tonight schedule. And when it comes to describing doctors, reporters have a choice of either dedicated lifesavers or lazy, arrogant members of the medical establishment. That is, if they are not ‘rogue’ doctors or butchers – but apparently anti-establishment mavericks are OK.
The Daily Telegraph was at it this week, with its cliché ridden report (link) on the “alarming” amount of overdiagnosis of ADHD.
According to the story ‘experts’ have ‘blown the whistle’ on the ‘explosion’ in ADHD misdiagnosis and ‘ ‘accused’ the medical establishment of taking too narrow a view, so that children will ‘miss out’ on the right treatment.
They save the best bit for last:
“He said too many children were being diagnosed with ADHD by lazy doctors who did not properly investigate the child's problems.”
I don’t know about lazy doctors, there are certainly some lazy journalists who need to investigate their cliché problems.
