<b>The Candlin Researcher Award: Balancing journalists’ and scientists’ professional practices
Producing an infotainment show about food and nutrition in the age of healthism and soft news
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.35586Keywords:
food, health journalism, linguistic ethnography, news production, nutrition, professional practicesAbstract
This paper analyses how health-related media content is produced by the editorial board of an infotainment TV show on food. Health-related news and other media content is on the rise, and impacts laypeople’s health knowledge, their behaviour, the public agenda and governmental policy. At the same time, it is criticized for being inaccurate, badly framed and sensationalist. This is generally attributed to the difficulty of linearly ‘translating’ scientific findings into journalistic findings, which results in the collision between scientific and journalistic perspectives and practices. This paper questions the idea that producing health-related media content is just linear translation, and looks into how two current societal trends, the rise of healthism and soft news, shape the production process. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data from fieldwork at the editorial board of the show, two case studies are analysed qualitatively and in-depth to gain deeper insight in the complex dynamics of producing health-related media content. The data show that producing health-related media-content indeed is not a matter of translating biomedical science to a journalistic perspective, but of intense coproduction of journalistic and scientific practices, and nowadays as well as of coproduction with new, non-scientific pseudo-experts and pseudo-scientific practices.
References
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Niva, M. (2007) ‘All foods affect health’: Understandings of functional foods and healthy eating among health-oriented Finns. Appetite 48 (3): 384–393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2006.10.006
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Rampton, B. (2007) Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5): 584–607. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00341.x
Reed, R. (2001) (Un-)professional discourse? Journalists’ and scientists’ stories about science in the media. Journalism 2 (3): 279–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488490100200310
Reinemann, C., Stanyer, J., Scherr, S. and Legnante, G. (2011) Hard and soft news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism 13 (2): 221–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884911427803
Saini, V., Garcia-Armesto, S., Klemperer, D., Paris, V., Elshaug, A. G., Brownlee, S., Ioannidis, J. P. A and Fisher, E. S. (2017) Drivers of poor medical care. The Lancet 390 (10090): 178–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30947-3
Schaich, K. M., Tian, X. and Xie, J. (2015) Hurdles and pitfalls in measuring antioxidant efficacy: A critical evaluation of ABTS, DPPH, and ORAC assays. Journal of Functional Foods 14: 111–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2015.01.043
Schokkaert, E., Eggermont, J., Heidbuchel, H., Hiele, M., Nemery, B., Storms, G., Van Brabandt, H., Van den Bergh, O., Van den Bulck, J., Van de Voorde, C., Vankrunkelsven, P., Van Ranst, M., Verbeke, K. and Achten, V. (2015) Gezondheid en gezondheidszorg: Iedereen expert? Metaforum visietekst 13. Leuven: Werkgroep Metaforum KU Leuven.
Seale, C. (2003) Health and media: An overview. Sociology of Health and Illness 25 (6): 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.t01-1-00356
Thomas, R. J., Tandoc, E. C. and Hinnant, A. (2017) False balance in public health reporting? Michele Bachmann, the HPV vaccine, and ‘mental retardation’. Health Communication 32 (2): 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2015.1110006
Turrini, M. (2015) A genealogy of ‘healthism’: Healthy subjectivities between individual autonomy and disciplinary control. Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology 7 (1): 11–27.
Viswanath, K., Blake, K. D., Meissner, H. I., Saiontz, N. G., Mull, C., Freeman, C. S., Hesse, B. and Croyle, R. T. (2008) Occupational practices and the making of health news: A national survey of US Health and medical science journalists. Journal of Health Communication 13 (8): 759–777. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730802487430
Weishaar, H., Dorfman, L., Freudenberg, N., Hawkins, B., Smith, K., Razum, O. and Hilton, S. (2016) Why media representations of corporations matter for public health policy: A scoping review. BMC Public Health 16 (899). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3594-8
WHO (2006) Evaluation of certain food contaminants: Sixty-fourth report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Blommaert, J. (2007) Commentaries on scope and depth in linguistic ethnography. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5): 682–688. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00346.x
Brodie, M., Hamel, E. C., Altman, D. E., Blendon, R. J. and Benson, J. M. (2003) Health news and the American public, 1996-2002. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 28 (5): 927–950. https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-28-5-927
Collins, P. A., Abelson, J., Pyman, H. and Lavis, J. N. (2006) Are we expecting too much from print media? An analysis of newspaper coverage of the 2002 Canadian healthcare reform debate. Social Science and Medicine 63 (1): 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.12.012
Crawford, R. (1980) Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services 10 (3): 365–388. https://doi.org/10.2190/3H2H-3XJN-3KAY-G9NY
Creese, A. (2008) Linguistic ethnography. In H. King and K. A. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2nd edition), vol. 10: 229–241. New York: Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_257
Dentzer, S. (2009) Communicating medical news – Pitfalls of health care journalism. New England Journal of Medicine 360 (1): 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp0805753
Dumit, J. (2012) Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822393481
EFSA (2008) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in food: Scientific opinion of the panel on contaminants in the food chain. EFSA Journal 724: 1–114.
EFSA (2010) Scientific opinion on the substantiation of health claims related to various food(s)/food constituent(s) and protection of cells from premature aging, antioxidant activity, antioxidant content and antioxidant properties, and protection of DNA, proteins and lipids from oxidative damage pursuant to Article 13(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. EFSA Journal 8 (2): 1–63.
Gray, E. M. and Leahy, D. (2013) Cooking up healthy citizens: The pedagogy of cookbooks. M/C Journal 16 (3). Available online: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/645
Greenhalgh, T. and Wessely, S. (2004) ‘Health for me’: A sociocultural analysis of healthism in the middle classes. British Medical Bulletin 69 (1): 197–213. https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldh013
Grilli, R., Ramsay, C. and Minozzi, S. (2002) Mass media interventions: Effects on health services utilisation (Review). Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews s 2002 (1): Art. CD000389. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD000389
Hallin, D. C. and Briggs, C. L. (2016) Making Health Public: How News Coverage Is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life. London: Routledge.
Henderson, J. A., Ward, P. R., Coveney, J. D. and Taylor, A. (2009) ‘Health is the number one thing we go for’: Healthism, citizenship and food choice. Paper delivered at The Future of Sociology, Australian Sociological Association Conference, Australia National University, Canberra, 1–4 December.
Jacobs, G. and Slembrouck, S. (2010) Notes on linguistic ethnography as a liminal activity. Text & Talk 30 (2): 235–244. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.2010.012
Lehman-Wilzig, S. N. and Seletzky, M. (2010) Hard news, soft news, ‘general’ news: The necessity and utility of an intermediate classification. Journalism 11 (1): 37–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884909350642
Lipworth, W., Kerridge, I., Morrell, B., Forsyth, R. and Jordens, C. F. C. (2015) Views of health journalists, industry employees and news consumers about disclosure and regulation of industry-journalist relationships: An empirical ethical study. Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (3): 252–257. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101790
Matthews, A., Herrett, E., Gasparrini, A., Van Staa, T., Goldacre, B., Smeeth, L. and Bhaskaran, K. (2016) Impact of statin related media coverage on use of statins: Interrupted time series analysis with UK primary care data. British Medical Journal 353: i3283. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i3283
Niva, M. (2007) ‘All foods affect health’: Understandings of functional foods and healthy eating among health-oriented Finns. Appetite 48 (3): 384–393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2006.10.006
O’Neill, D. and Harcup, T. (2009) News values and selectivity. In K. Wahl-Jorgensen and T. Hanitzsch (eds) The Handbook of Journalism Studies, 161–174. London: Routledge.
Rampton, B. (2007) Neo-Hymesian linguistic ethnography in the United Kingdom. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5): 584–607. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00341.x
Reed, R. (2001) (Un-)professional discourse? Journalists’ and scientists’ stories about science in the media. Journalism 2 (3): 279–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488490100200310
Reinemann, C., Stanyer, J., Scherr, S. and Legnante, G. (2011) Hard and soft news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism 13 (2): 221–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884911427803
Saini, V., Garcia-Armesto, S., Klemperer, D., Paris, V., Elshaug, A. G., Brownlee, S., Ioannidis, J. P. A and Fisher, E. S. (2017) Drivers of poor medical care. The Lancet 390 (10090): 178–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30947-3
Schaich, K. M., Tian, X. and Xie, J. (2015) Hurdles and pitfalls in measuring antioxidant efficacy: A critical evaluation of ABTS, DPPH, and ORAC assays. Journal of Functional Foods 14: 111–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2015.01.043
Schokkaert, E., Eggermont, J., Heidbuchel, H., Hiele, M., Nemery, B., Storms, G., Van Brabandt, H., Van den Bergh, O., Van den Bulck, J., Van de Voorde, C., Vankrunkelsven, P., Van Ranst, M., Verbeke, K. and Achten, V. (2015) Gezondheid en gezondheidszorg: Iedereen expert? Metaforum visietekst 13. Leuven: Werkgroep Metaforum KU Leuven.
Seale, C. (2003) Health and media: An overview. Sociology of Health and Illness 25 (6): 513–531. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.t01-1-00356
Thomas, R. J., Tandoc, E. C. and Hinnant, A. (2017) False balance in public health reporting? Michele Bachmann, the HPV vaccine, and ‘mental retardation’. Health Communication 32 (2): 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2015.1110006
Turrini, M. (2015) A genealogy of ‘healthism’: Healthy subjectivities between individual autonomy and disciplinary control. Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology 7 (1): 11–27.
Viswanath, K., Blake, K. D., Meissner, H. I., Saiontz, N. G., Mull, C., Freeman, C. S., Hesse, B. and Croyle, R. T. (2008) Occupational practices and the making of health news: A national survey of US Health and medical science journalists. Journal of Health Communication 13 (8): 759–777. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730802487430
Weishaar, H., Dorfman, L., Freudenberg, N., Hawkins, B., Smith, K., Razum, O. and Hilton, S. (2016) Why media representations of corporations matter for public health policy: A scoping review. BMC Public Health 16 (899). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3594-8
WHO (2006) Evaluation of certain food contaminants: Sixty-fourth report of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Published
2018-12-31
Issue
Section
Special Features
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Declercq, J. (2018). <b>The Candlin Researcher Award: Balancing journalists’ and scientists’ professional practices: Producing an infotainment show about food and nutrition in the age of healthism and soft news. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 13(1-3), 393-416. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.35586
