A week or two ago I asked all my freshmen to send me TV clips that were related to health. I intended this to be vague, so I could see how they would interpret health on TV. They sent me Hulu and YouTube clips related to House, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Scrubs, etc. I also had several clips related to H1N1 coverage in the news; I supplemented those with my own selection of Jon Stewart tearing into CNN regarding their coverage of healthcare reform and H1N1. (That was immediately one of my favorite clips from The Daily Show ever. It's here. It's brilliant.)
Anyway, one of the students submitted this YouTube clip of a news story reporting on a cheerleader who received the flu shot which "destroyed her chances of happiness."
Of course the reaction in the classroom was shock, horror, etc. Despite the fact it was described as one in a million, the students' primary takeaway message was that the flu shot can cause major problems.
I didn't know enough to make any claims about the accuracy of the diagnosis of this woman, but the reporting on this seemed pretty poor. And then this video was passed along by my TA a couple days ago...
I'll be showing that second video to them in class today, and we'll be discussing some of those user comments which suggest that (perhaps) the problem wasn't related to the flu shot at all. I'm wondering if all the news outlets that covered the original story will now cover her cure... Or dig into whether or not the problem was really caused by the flu shot to begin with...
To me, this is a fascinating intersection of mass media, new media, and how poor reporting can lead people to take the (extremely) wrong message away from a news story. Or "news" story, as the case may be.
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