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Great Job...Shame on you, WFLD!
By JOHN F. KUCZAJ
I witnessed the best and the worst of TV journalism last week - and it was no coincidence that it happened during the November ratings period.
First, the good stuff:
Mark Saxenmeyer reported a multipart investigative story on WFLD about Argenbright security. A Producer with a hidden camera participated in the Argenbright training program, and probably would have been hired had she not been too intelligent. It was a very well-done series and added to the mounting evidence that an incompetent company is staffing ill-trained and ill-equipped people at the airport. Hidden camera investigations have been scarce since the ABC/Food Lion lawsuit, so I was happily surprised that the hidden camera was used so liberally in this investigation.
Great job WFLD!
Now, the crap:
We all know that local news operations hold their best investigative reports & sensational feature stories until the ratings "sweeps" and it seems like the same stories are re-done every 6-12 months.
That's because they are.
I'm waiting for the next story about "Internet Predators" who prey on young children. That's one of the most popular. The last time I saw that one was a WGN report about how hazardous chat rooms are. The only problem was they forgot to mention that a huge majority of the chat room incidents are on AOL. I guess they didn't want to risk a lawsuit, so they just talked about "the internet".
Another popular story is usually dubbed "toxic teeth" and speaks of concerns that silver amalgam fillings have Mercury in them and, gosh, that's gotta be bad for you! Margaret Shortridge, WFLD's health reporter presented this fairy tale on Thursday night. Although she tried her best to be balanced, her bias and the bias of the video press release-where the story came from-became all-too apparent.
Rather than go for the catchy, alliterative "Toxic Teeth", Margaret's story was called "Mercury Concerns".
Good choice.
It's neutral and not at all alarming.
Fair and Balanced.
Then she delivered the into to the story with "...those fillings are really made up of mercury and can be giving you toxic teeth..." Okay...forget all the fair and balanced crap I just mentioned. She just tipped off the whole point of her story and the bias.
Next up was a bit about a woman in England who had something like 14 fillings removed, and amazingly started feeling better (I think she had MS or Lupus or something). I was very surprised by this revelation - that there are dentists in England. The profile of a woman who didn't live in the WFLD viewing area-or even any US station viewing area-tipped me off that this story had been pre-packaged and sent to WFLD. Some lazy news Producer must have received it in the mail and decided that rather than gather news responsibly, running that tape would be a cool thing. But what was the insidious reason behind the tape? Was it the quick shot of the book "Whole Body Dentistry" that followed? No, the authors didn't appear in the tape at all. I'd have to look deeper.
In order to mask the pre-packaged stench, the original authors included instructions for the TV station to do some interviews with the ADA and a Dentist. So, at this point, Margaret talks with and ADA spokesman who insists that amalgam fillings are safe and that no credible studies have been done to prove otherwise. We then hear from a local Dentist, who does not use amalgams, is referred to as a "mercury free dentist" and says that studies have been done to show that amalgams are not safe. I'm just guessing that this dentist either doesn't read her ADA literature, or has access to studies that no one else has.
At this point, we get another dissenting opinion from Dr. Boyd Haley, who's not a dentist but the Chaiman of the Chemisty department at the University of Kentucky. He says the ADA is "totally wrong" and speaks vaguely about studies that show this. Cut to a local touch as we hear from a Chicago woman with MS who had her 16 fillings removed and now gets around better than she ever had.
That ends the report, but not the biased reporting as Margaret tosses back to Robin with "...some 60,000 people have had them (amalgams) removed and they say they have felt much better..." Robin & Walter talk a bit with Margaret, who ends the banter with "...kinda scary..."
Yeah…scary that crap reached the air.
Okay kids! Now it's time to poke some gaping holes in this shoddy reporting!
I mentioned the use of the loaded term "Toxic Teeth" and I mentioned the odd profile of the woman from England. Let's take stock of the pro & anti-amalgam people featured: 1 Pro-Amalgam guy from the ADA and 4 Anti-Amalgam folks. Balanced? Using the legal standard of "Innocent before proven guilty," the pro-amalgam ADA guy didn't need to produce proof that amalgams were safe and he did state that there was no proof to the contrary. The burden of proof then falls upon the anti-amalgam folks, who only cited amorphous "studies" that have been done. Due to the lack of hard facts, the only way a viewer could make up their mind would be to decide who was more credible in the report. Looks to me like 4 out of 5 people in the report say amalgams are unsafe. In the absence of facts, the viewer is lead to believe the ant-amalgam group.
At this point, I'll explain that the origin of the "toxic teeth" reports is a dubious 1990 60 Minutes report called "Poison In Your Mouth." After the report originally aired, the National Council Against Heath Fraud (http://www.ncahf.org/nl/1991/9-10.html) pointed out that 60 Minutes was sent a letter by Accuracy in the
Media, Inc., a news media watchdog group, expressing its concern over the lack of balance in its report and that Inside MS magazine explains how MS sufferers who gave testimonials could have been misled into believing that amalgam replacement had been of value to them.
Wanna see some of the ludicrous "studies" the anti-amalgam group bases their facts on? Take a look at "Toxic Television: The Mercury Amalgam Scam" by Dr. Stephen Barrett on the American Council on Science and Health web site (http://www.acsh.org/publications/priorities/0304/television.html) . This essay attacks the original 60 Minutes report, which is replicated every year for local rating sweeps. Dr. Barrett mentions that, "The most powerful segment featured a woman who said that her symptoms of multiple sclerosis had disappeared overnight. The fact that arthritis and multiple sclerosis normally have ups and downs was not mentioned during the program. Neither was the fact that removal of fillings temporarily raises body mercury load, so that no "overnight cure" could possibly be caused by mercury removal." And that the magazines Consumer Reports, American Health, Prevention, and many health newsletters reassured their readers that amalgam is safe.
The California Dental Association issued a press release entitled "Junk Science Threatens Dental Heath Treatments" (http://www.cda.org/press/junk.html) that points out that "The U.S. Public Health Service issued a report in 1993 stating there is no health reason not to use amalgam, except in the extremely rare case of the patient who is allergic to a component of amalgam. This supports the findings of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health Technology Assessment Conference and the National Institutes of Dental Research, that dental amalgam is a safe and effective restorative material." And that "People are exposed to more total mercury from food, water and air than from the minuscule amounts of mercury vapor generated from amalgam fillings."
Not convinced yet?
Well then, let's talk about the Dr. Boyd Haley, the only scientist that was on the original tape. It didn't take me long to figure out that he was the central figure behind the slanted report. I looked up his name on the internet and found the web site of his company, ALT, Inc. (http://www.altcorp.com/ ) What does his company do? Affinity Laboratory Technologies is the dental and medical products division of ALT Inc. providing oral toxicity testing products and services and diagnostic aides for neurological diseases.
That's right, they sell at home & in office tests to doctors!
So. The answer to the question who created this tape and for what purpose is: ALT, Inc created the tape in order to reinforce doubt in skittish people's minds about their fillings so they go to their dentist and pay for their test to be done to check for mercury toxicity.
Wow!
If I could do that kind of investigative reporting just on the internet, I have to wonder why no one at WFLD could do the same for the toxic teeth report?
Finally, I'll address the 60,000 figure that Margaret mentioned. In context, her statement is merely unattributed hearsay. Yet even if it was true, we're talking 60,000 cases out of the estimated 100,000,000 people with amalgam fillings. That comes out to .06% of all cases. This percentage is so far under even the placebo effect as to be highly suspicious. In cases where placebos are tested vs. real drugs, the percentage of people who find the placebo effective is 25-50%. That .06% of people who had amalgams supposedly felt better after taking them out isn't surprising considering they were probably already mentally exasperating their symptoms.
Oh, and if you are skittish about putting mercury in your mount, the alternative is a Composite filling, made up primarily of resin and glass. Resin, of course is a plastic. Plastic, of course if a petroleum product. Hey, here's a great name for a follow-up report: "Crude Oil in Your Mouth."
Am I being too hard on Margaret? Yeah, probably. I doubt it was her fault that this piece of crap was produced. I have a feeling that Dr. Michael Breen would laugh at the story, but since Margaret is a non-doctor reporting health issues, I suppose I should give her some slack.
Okay, that's enough slack. Get back to work.
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