Media(ted) fabrications: How the science–media symbiosis helped ‘sell’ cord banking
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Carolyn Michelle
Carolyn Michelle convenes the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of Waikato and lectures in the Department of Societies and Cultures. Her previous research has been in the areas of gender and media, documentary representations of domestic violence (with C. Kay Weaver), and assisted reproductive technologies.
Abstract
This paper considers the problematic role of the science–media symbiosis in the dissemination of misleading and emotionally manipulative information regarding services offered by CordBank, New Zealand's only umbilical cord blood banking facility. As this case study illustrates, the growing reliance of health and science reporters on the knowledge capital of medical specialists, biogenetic researchers, and scientists potentially enhances the ability of ‘expert’ sources to set the agenda for media representations of emerging medical and scientific developments, and may undermine the editorial independence of journalists and editors, many of whom in this case failed to critically evaluate deeply problematic claims regarding the current and future benefits of cord banking. Heavy reliance on established media frames of anecdotal personalization and technoboosterism also reinforced a proscience journalistic culture in which claims by key sources were uncritically reiterated and amplified, with journalistic assessments of the value of cord banking emphasizing potential benefits for individual consumers. It is argued that use of these media frames potentially detracts from due consideration of the broader social, ethical, legal, and health implications of emerging biomedical developments, along with the professional, personal, and increasingly also financial interests at stake in their public promotion, given the growing commercialization of biogenetic technologies.
About the author
Carolyn Michelle convenes the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of Waikato and lectures in the Department of Societies and Cultures. Her previous research has been in the areas of gender and media, documentary representations of domestic violence (with C. Kay Weaver), and assisted reproductive technologies.
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Lifestyle counseling in type 2 diabetes prevention: A case study of a nurse's communication activity to produce change talk
- Representations of people with HIV and hepatitis C in editorials of medical journals: Discourses and interdiscursive relations
- When psychotherapists disclose personal information about themselves to clients
- The deep play of medicine: Discursive and collaborative processing of evidence in medical problem solving
- Media(ted) fabrications: How the science–media symbiosis helped ‘sell’ cord banking
- An enquiry into scientific and media discourse in the MMR controversy: Authority and factuality
- What healthcare students do with what they don't know: The socializing power of ‘uncertainty’ in the case presentation
- Commentary 1. ‘Telling the truth about genomics’: Hype and hope
- Commentary 2. ‘Telling the truth about genomics’: Legitimating a third voice: The role of philosophy in societal debates
- Commentary 3. ‘Telling the truth about genomics’: Toward a societal agenda for genomics research
- Response to commentators
