TV News Has an Ugly Role in the Pharma Epidemic That Has Killed 200,000 Americans | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/drugs/tv-news-have-remained-silent-about-big-pharma-role-opioid-crisis
When they do report on drugs, TV news media spend more time on Prince and celebrity deaths than on drug policy that affects millions. More time on state marijuana laws than far more deadly federal opioid-prescription legislation. More time discussing how El Chapo escaped from prison than how to put devious prescription distributors and pharmaceutical drug-dealers behind bars. More time on how to clean up the mess than on how to stop the flow. And with drug commercials a mainstay of TV broadcast and cable news programming, it is easy to understand why the topic rarely surfaces.
Andrew Tyndall, who tracks ABC, NBC and CBS Evening News programs on Tyndall Reports.com, kindly provided search results for his narcotics category and returned 149 stories on the three networks from Feb. 1, 2014, to May 1, 2016.
Many stories each on Bill Cosby, El Chapo, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Prince; many gut-wrenching tales of addicts, families, first responders, communities, courts and police battling the epidemic. And a whole bunch of stories on medical marijuana and pot legalization. But not one story on pharmaceutical drug policies or laws enacted at the root of the opioid crisis.
Except one—ironically, a Feb. 27, 2014, NBC News story on FDA approval of a new painkiller, Zohydro ER, which is five to 10 times more powerful than hydrocodone. Senior-level FDA officials during the Obama administration approved the painkiller over the FDA’s Advisory Board recommendations, which are normally followed.
TV news continues to focus on the heartbreaking individual stories of addiction, the damage opioids have wreaked on our communities, and how doctors, clinics, courts, police and first responders are dealing with the crisis. While well-intentioned, their failure to confront the root causes—Big Pharma, its lobbyists and the laws that enable them—will doom us to a continuing cycle of misery. We need Big News to step up and do more. It’s the crisis in our backyards. There will be no solution until we curtail and rethink the pharmaceutical pipeline.