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THE GUARDIAN |
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COMMENT |
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The
BBC must not be led by the
shock tactics of the Mail Careless TV costs
lives, as the over-hyped
vaccine scares have shown Polly
Toynbee August is when phoney
flammed-up stories fill the
empty dog-days of summer. New
Labour duty ministers used to
prime the holiday-starved
media with a daily grid of
news, but now such conspicuous
spin is over. And look what
happens instead. "Chaos Over
5-in-1 Baby Jab" screams
the Daily Mail, delighted by a
chance to repeat its weird and
lethal campaign against
vaccines. The Department of
Health announces a minor
improvement to the vaccine for
diphtheria, tetanus, whooping
cough and HIB, adding the
previously orally administered
polio vaccine. The polio
vaccine will no longer be
live, so is even safer. At the
same time the tiny mercury
content is being removed as it
is no longer the right
preservative for this
combination. Taking mercury
out also fulfils longstanding
global obligations to remove
mercury from everything
possible because life-time
exposure builds up and should
be reduced. Never mind if the
new vaccine is yet safer and
simpler - the Mail was in full
scare mode. It would matter less
if the BBC's Today programme
hadn't rushed in to give this
non-story legs - starting with
another unscripted breathless
early morning scare/chaos
report. It ran on through
their bulletins, only
straightening itself out after
a Department of Health press
conference. The department was
running to catch up after the
story was leaked in advance of
what should have been an
orderly announcement today. Would a minister like
to comment on the breathtaking
media irresponsibility over
something so sensitive and
important? The department said
gloomily they just hoped the
"story" would go
away. Their experience over
MMR was that every time
vaccination was mentioned in
the media - even when it was
more evidence that it was safe
- the immunisation rate
dropped again as many parents
only absorbed
"controversy". This week's minor
announcement let the Mail
rekindle its campaign claiming
the MMR vaccine could cause
autism and bowel disorders
after one shaky study by a
maverick doctor,
unsubstantiated and refuted by
virtually all experts. They
featured another heart-rending
story of a parent who blamed
vaccination for her child's
autism - the stories that sent
out such shockwaves that the
number of children immunised
in Britain dropped
dangerously. This attempted scare
over the new vaccine does not
even have the benefit of any
disputed study. Unfounded
fears of "overloading the
immune system" by
combining polio into the other
vaccines were raised by two
parents groups (provoked by
the Mail?) without one
scientist backing it up. Not
even one charlatan with a
professional-sounding title
could be found to support the
"overloading" fears.
But it was enough for the Mail
- and the BBC - to talk of
"scares" now
endangering a second vital
vaccination programme. Let's hope this
nonsense does not repeat the
damage done to the MMR
programme. It is impossible to
estimate the number of
children who will have died as
a result of the MMR scare, so
it will not be possible to
show the grieving parents of
babies killed by the Mail or
the children with eye damage
and other serious effects of
measles. Anyone my age
remembers how some 100
children a year died of it and
one in 15 cases had serious
complications, often with
lifelong damage. I had measles
severely as a child, with
weeks of high fever in a
blackout room to protect the
eyes. Four hundred and sixty
eight thousand fewer children
were immunised due to the
anti-MMR campaign, the loss of
community immunity putting
vulnerable people at risk. But the
"community immunity"
idea smacks of some kind of
socialist plot against the
individual in the Mail
mindset. The paper rarely
justifies itself, on the
never-apologise-never-explain
principle, but here's an
anonymous quote from a Mail
spokesperson: "It is not
our job to promote group
immunity. If some of our
readers' kids might be
affected as individuals - even
if that is a remote chance -
then we have to report it and
will continue to do so."
Since they have sales of 2m
and many more readers, clearly
the concept of community
immunity for all their readers
has simply passed them by. The
Mail spokesman added:
"Our readers are adults
and they can decide for
themselves how scared they
ought to be." The
executive producer of Sky News
went one better: "The
audience appears to want to be
scared." The above quotes come
from a brilliant critique of
the media's reporting of
health issues, Health in the
News: Risk, Reporting and
Media Influence, by the King's
Fund, the leading health
thinktank. It shows that
health coverage is in direct
inverse proportion to real
risk. What kills most people
gets least coverage (and the
BBC scored worst). The report
shows how politicians have
often been forced to change
policy priorities and health
spending according to what the
media highlights, regardless
of public good or even public
opinion. Along with Anna Coote
and Jessica Allen, the third
author of the report is Roger
Harrabin, distinguished Today
correspondent, which adds
impact to the harsh criticism
of the BBC in the analysis of
its coverage and the failure
of its public service remit.
Studying the pathology of the
MMR story, the report quotes
the editor of the 10 O'Clock
News admitting that stories
running hard in the press, and
especially in the Mail, were
"irresistible". He
said the controversy over MMR
would continue across the
media as long as the Mail kept
running with the story. If
issues were debated in widely
read papers, he was obliged to
run them. He admitted they had
"probably"
over-reported MMR, but said
that he was governed by
"public debate". A feeding frenzy
really gets going when the BBC
buys into it: a newspaper
starts a scare, the government
or chief medical officer is
goaded into responding, the
paper gets a publicity-hungry
MP to ask questions and, hey
presto, it's a "public
debate". Isn't it exactly
at such times that the value
of the BBC is tested? But
often it is swept along,
letting ignorant Mail-obsessed
blokey presenters fan the
flames, instead of leaving it
to the specialists to knock
lies and scares on the head. I laughed to see that
at the end of the King's Fund
report were the BBC's draft
guidelines on risk, drawn up
after one of their
interminable seminars so
familiar to those of us who
have worked within, where very
highly paid officials lay out
the best possible rules to
help the public assess the
real risks of scares. But the
question for the BBC's new
director of news is why the
high-flown BBC guidelines
translate into the casual,
breezy Mail-influenced
throwaway lines from
under-briefed presenters in
programmes edited and staffed
by those who too easily forget
the difference between the
Mail and the BBC. The BBC's best reason
for charter renewal is that it
eschews racy news and takes
the high ground to try to
counter-balance Britain's
abysmal press. It has to be
trusted to tell the facts as
best it can, even if that's
duller, more pompous and more
complicated: the truth often
is. |