Spam Journalism #9
Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. (MacDoctor definition)
And today’s fine example of spam journalism has a medical flavour (always plenty of that). From the Taranaki Daily News:
Hospital services to get the knife
“Taranaki’s public hospitals are preparing for cutbacks after the Government laid down tough new ground rules.”
Sounds bad doesn’t it? Nasty government going to make poor hospital cut services. Except that it is simply instructions from Ryall to concentrate budgets on elective surgery and cut out bureaucracy. Oh no! we can’t cut back on our bureaucracy service! The patient’s love filling in endless forms while they bleed to death or writhe in pain. It soooo soooothing! </sarcasm>
The actual story:
“Minister of Health Tony Ryall told the 21 district health boards last week they must shorten their waiting times, work with less bureaucracy and better value their health workforce all without any extra money.”
In other words – suck it up boys. There’s plenty of fat in the system again – it’s just not at the frontline. It’s in the endless community initiatives which no-one in the community has heard of. The public health campaigns that don’t include the public. The quality assurance drives that make absolutely no difference to patient care. The deeply paranoid atmosphere that has doctors and nurses writing copious notes rather than seeing patients, because you are not criticised for making patients wait, but if you don’t write down everything you did and said, you may be crucified if anything goes wrong.
But no. Let’s not mention all the crap in the system that needs to be removed. Let’s rather have a sensationalist headline that makes Tony Ryall seem like the axe-wielding nutter in a slasher flick.
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Mar 11 09 1:21 pm
Perhaps they could start by getting rid of the people that produced the warm fuzzy vision and mission statements.
When you publish something on the web that tells people how bad TABACCO is, I wonder what value that places on the whole outfit.
Maybe it was an ex employee of the Taranaki Daily News that writes their website blurbs!
http://www.tdhb.org.nz/dhb/vision.shtml
Mar 11 09 5:33 pm
Tabacco (n): Combination of gambling and smoking. Indulged in by those really addicted to risk.
Mar 12 09 6:33 pm
What did people die of before they started smoking tobacco? Ive forgotten. Cant remember the last immortal non smoker Ive met but they must exist, cause smoking is the cause of all disease and all deaths. (PS No, I no longer smoke but Im thinking of taking it up again)
Mar 13 09 12:39 am
Lucy: What did people die of before they started smoking tobacco?
Syphilis.
Mar 13 09 10:31 am
“…cause smoking is the cause of all disease and all deaths.” Nah, I thought it was all the fatties that did that. Terrible indictment of society these days that you don’t just die any more, you die of something and it must be named. That being said, you can’t ignore that there is hugely increased risk in doing either activity – either stuffing your face and sucking on a cancer stick, and it’s all 100% preventable. Getting on to the topic, I’m all for cutting the fat out of the system and it’s noticable that for every ‘restructure’ another layer of bureaucrats have appeared and it’s not even worth the headline for them to start looking at the excess in the system in order to put money where it should go. Have to be careful though, some of the pen-pushers are useful. I’d hate to see front-line staff getting pulled away from clinical duties to get bogged down in doing budgets etc.