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Butter or Margarine? Getting the Facts in Media Stories
by Cathy Coleman
Butter is bad for us. Everyone knows that right? But it turns out that margarine, especially the stick margarine, is actually worse for us than butter. So should we go back to butter? Wait . . . maybe it isn't about butter or margarine. Maybe it's about whether the product is hard or soft. According to an ABC News report dated June 23rd of last year, "A study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine looked at how harder, processed fats-such as stick margarine, butter and lard-affect cholesterol levels when compared with softer products like tub margarine and oil. The softer products were found to be healthier because the harder ones have more of what are called trans fatty acids, which raise cholesterol and the risk of heart disease."
Hmmm . . . so would it be better to have soft butter or hard margarine? For many of us, the answer we want to shout is: "I give up! I'm going to die of something, and they don't seem to know really which foods are good and which aren't, so I'm going to eat what I want."
Not only are we overwhelmed by an abundance of seemingly contradictory information, but some of us feel we're becoming a bit paranoid. According to Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, "The public is confused and scared about cancer risks because of the different ways the possible causes of cancer are portrayed by scientists, journalists, and environmentalists." He sites an example about what scientists agree are the causes of cancer as opposed to what the media reports. "Though scientists rate sunlight and dietary factors as the most dangerous causes of cancer, reporters pay far more attention to manmade chemicals, food additives, and hormones found in birth control pills as major cancer causing agents." Who are the people who get asked the questions by reporters? Who gets quoted? Often showcased are people on the extremes, people, say, who have a strong bias in favor of manmade pesticides or people with a strong bias against them. Many of us also sense that an element of sensationalism is used in stories reported by the media to get more people to tune in and to get higher ratings.
For example, last year, we saw an increasing number of alarming stories on the use of cell phones and their possible link to cancer. One story told of a lawsuit by a woman's family who claimed that she developed a tumor behind her left ear from using her cell phone. Soon after, similar, disturbing stories flashed across the pages of our newspapers and the screens of our TVs. All this despite the fact that no study had proven the link between cell phones and cancer to be true. According to a Dec 20th, 2000 article in USA Today, "A study released . . . in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that there is no significant risk from short term use of cellular phones that use analog signals. . . . Except for preliminary results from a Swedish study, which also found no risk from the phones, there have been no studies on how cell phones affect humans."
Yet we would not have known that there was even a dispute going on about the possible dangers of cell phone usage from most of the initial media coverage. I know during this past year, I, like many people, began to wonder if I should stop using my cell phone. I saw the 3-minute TV news coverage, which seemed to indicate there was a good chance that my continued use could lead to brain tumors, and I worried. I didn't throw away my phone though. I decided to read more, see what else I could find out, and realized that until further studies were done-as many scientists were urging-to determine the long-term effects of cell phone usage, no hard and fast conclusions could be drawn.
In the end, who do we believe? We want the facts, just the facts, but how can we know what the facts are when so much of our information comes from very short segments on the 6:00 news, and when these broadcasts, depending on the station we're watching, often contradict each other? In a world where studies on the effects of smoking are funded by tobacco companies, and studies about new food additives, like the controversial Olestra, are funded by for-profit corporations who seek to benefit from the food additive, in this case Proctor & Gamble, who do we trust? How do we even begin to distinguish fact from opinion?
Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge we have about how a study is done, what makes for a trustworthy study, and whose money paid for the study, the more able we will be to make those distinctions. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind and questions to ask when evaluating media stories:
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Where did the media get this information? What's the source?
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Does the person or group giving the report have a bias towards one point of view or the other? Who was interviewed? For whom does this person work? Is she or he the person from the tobacco company who insists that smoking does not cause cancer?
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Be wary. Sometimes an individual from a corporation, or a group advocating a certain cause, will prepare a press release with a particular point of view that is sent to the different media as an objective news report. These press releases are usually not mentioned as the source of information. Call the media. Ask who provided the information.
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Don't make snap judgments. When a new study is presented with certain findings-especially one about a health-related issue-accept it for what it is: just one study. Seek out more information from a variety of sources and/or ask a health care professional whom you trust.
And returning to our original concern about whether to eat butter or margarine, take it-as with everything else presented by the media-with a grain of salt!
Cathy Coleman is the practitioner inquiry coordinator for SABES. She is also an associate coordinator at the SABES Central Regional Support Center. She can be reached at 617-482-9485 or by e-mail at ccoleman@worlded.org.
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New
England Literacy Resource Center
44 Farnsworth Street Boston, MA 02210
(617) 482-9485
Updated 10/01 Questions, comments, or problems please contact Steve Quann