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The news media's honeymoon with Barack Obama is over. The President's diplomatic tour of the major powers of eastern Asia made a stop in Shanghai to showcase his pitch for political freedoms in the People's Republic of China. Each network had its White House correspondent follow along; yet none chose Obama's town hall meeting with university students for its lead. Instead breast cancer screening was the unanimous choice for Story of the Day. Each newscast brought in its in-house physician to consult on a recommendation in the Annals of Internal Medicine by the Preventive Services Taskforce that many mammograms, especially for fortysomething women, are unnecessary. NBC launched its corporatewide Green is Universal week by anchoring its newscast from Los Angeles.

All three newscasts covered the basic details of the PSTF recommendations: those women who are not at high risk of breast cancer should undergo mammography every other year starting at age 50 until their mid-seventies; hitherto annual mammography had been recommended starting at age 40. The tissue in the breasts of women in their 40s is not suitable, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman explained: "Denser breasts make screening more unreliable. That could mean more false positives, which could lead to more tests, higher costs and more anxiety for the patient."

NBC anchor Brian Williams, who was in Los Angeles, invited Susan Love into the studio to assess the panel's findings. Love, "one of the foremost experts in this field," pointed out that a consensus of her colleagues recommended age 50 as the starting point back in 1997: "There was a big outcry. Congress passed a nonbinding resolution and told the National Cancer Institute to come up with better guidelines. So these were never based on science." Love added that mammography would not be banned by fortysomethings: "It is not that we are trying to deprive them from their right to be irradiated," she quipped sarcastically. "It is not as good at actually saving lives as it is later in life."

NBC anchor Williams inaccurately hyped the importance of the story by calling breast cancer "the second leading cause of death in this country." Not true--he meant cancers of all kinds. CBS anchor Katie Couric was considerably calmer, citing a breast cancer death toll of 40,000 annually. ABC anchor Charles Gibson noted the taskforce's claim that the current mammography guidelines do save lives. He asked his in-house physician Timothy Johnson whether the benefit of preventing unnecessary treatments and anxiety from false positives was worth the risk of death from undetected tumors. "I was surprised that some prominent people, including Susan Love who is probably the best known cancer researcher in this country, agreed with the new guidelines."

What is this Preventive Services Taskforce? ABC's John McKenzie called them "healthcare professionals considered among the best at analyzing medical data." NBC's Snyderman said they were "researchers at some of the most highly regarded institutions in the United States." CBS' Jennifer Ashton called it "a respected panel of government medical experts." On the other hand, the American Cancer Society "is refusing to go along with the new recommendations," ABC's McKenzie pointed out.

Andrew Tyndall 11/21/09 12:21:58 am

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