Connect the dots

Sometimes the media fails to connect the dots between stories.

Beware of the media beating its breast. It's nearly always confessing the wrong sins. For example: much of the discussion of the eternally impending press council, now inching slightly closer to reality, asserts or assumes that an "uncouncilled" press tends toward freewheeling, irresponsible sensationalism. What the media needs, in this picture, is more sober use of safely reliable data and expertise. v

This caricature may be an accurate reflection of how tabloids approach the average Posh 'n' Becks story. But when it comes to more important matters, the real sin is quite the opposite, with journalists cripplingly credulous and dependent on easily available official sources, be they the Israeli authorities in Gaza, US military PR flaks in Iraq or the gardai at Dublin Airport.

Look at the Irish Examiner's recent series on cancer, and indeed the coverage of it on 5-7 Live. The series began with a potentially fantastic story, data ("Ireland's cancer map") showing that your chances of getting cancer depend on where you live in Ireland: the more west, the safer.

But De Paper, and then the radio programme, killed the story dead by relying on one medical expert who said this variation could be explained by people's "lifestyle" differences, smoking mostly. (The expert, Dr Harry Comber of the National Cancer Registry, was even more definitive on this point on radio than in the paper, saying the risk belonged to individuals rather than to the places where they live.) The newspaper series then made matters more boring with further highly "responsible" and statistically dense explorations of regional differences in care provision and mortality.

True west

A confident, genuinely popular media would use such a story to underline what thousands of us heading west for our holidays already believe: it's healthier to be in a place with less industry, less pollution, less congestion, less intensive pesticide- and herbicide-heavy agriculture – and the work-locations in such a place are probably healthier too. The fact that quotable cancer professionals here are largely wedded to a "strategy" that downplays environmental carcinogens other than second-hand tobacco smoke wouldn't stop such a media from at least asking the right questions.

Answering such questions would require both common sense and a slightly wider trawl for experts. How about the authors of a recent study on environmental and occupational causes of cancer from Boston University School of Public Health and the Environmental Health Initiative at University of Massachusetts? They write: "Cancer prevention programs focused on tobacco use, diet, and other individual behaviors disregard the lessons of science."

The classic scientific literature on cancer sensibly cites "geographical variation in incidence" as grounds for investigating environmental causes. But Rachael English and the Examiner are happy to chirp, "Oh, I see, more people smoke in Dublin. How interesting."

It's fine to ask governments why some regions have better treatment regimes than others, but we desperately need a media that demands to know why we have so many cancer-causing agents in our environment. The problem might even turn out to be no harder to fix than the healthcare system.

Social diseases

Predictably, Monday's Institute of Public Health report on health inequalities was covered lackadaisically by Morning Ireland, with no connection made to the cancer map.

The causes of cancer and other diseases are complex, but familiar; many are "social" rather than personal and could be avoided if society changed its priorities. The World Health Organisation said as much in a stunning report published on 16 June 2005, with a press release that went straight to the point: "As much as 24 per cent of global disease is caused by environmental exposures which can be averted... More than 33 per cent of disease in children under the age of five is caused by environmental exposures. Preventing environmental risk could save as many as four million lives a year in children alone, mostly in developing countries."

I searched the Irish Times online archive in vain for a report on this important, clearly presented study. I did, however, find an IT article on another study published a few days later, linking obesity with oesophegal cancer – another in the ongoing series of media/medical kicks in the chest for fatties and smokers. (Obesity and smoking, too, have social causes, but it's easy to portray them as individual "lifestyle" choices.)

The prevailing media line on cancer is all too "responsible". A bit of angry eco-sensationalism would go a long way.