A Hard Look Finds a Weak Network Script Fading to Blah

By MERVIN BLOCK
January 2003

I drink tea. A lot of it. Mug after mug. Day after day. Been drinking it since I was a kid. So I’ve been glad to hear tea may be good for us. But I’m teed off by stories that seem to have more holes than a sieve. One of those stories caught my ear recently on a network evening newscast:

“There are several new studies out tonight on the health benefits of tea, especially the green and black varieties that are rich in antioxidants. Researchers found drinking tea can reduce levels of bad cholesterol and help prevent heart disease and cancer.” (CBS News, Sept. 24, 2002)

That’s it, 41 words. Most arresting is the assertion about what researchers found:

“Researchers found drinking tea can reduce levels of bad cholesterol and help prevent heart disease and cancer.”

Although we’ve been hearing for several years about possible benefits from drinking tea, I wondered who conducted the new studies mentioned in the script’s first sentence. And I wondered how much tea it would take to do me any good. How much and how often? What kind of tea: powdered, bottled, bagged or loose leaf? Which variety? Assam? Darjeeling? Oolong? Black or green? Made with what kind of water? At what temperature? And brewed for how long? Taken with sugar? Lemon? Milk, cream or straight? Can tea help any viewer? Especially me?

Also, I wondered how the new studies supported, differed from or advanced the stories we’ve been hearing for several years. So I poked around the Internet and the news world’s solar plexus, LexisNexis. And I made some phone calls.

Two hours before the Sept. 24th newscast, Reuters sent out a story at 4:23 p.m., ET. The story was based on a news conference that day for the previous day’s Third International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health, held in Washington, D.C. The gathering had been sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the American Cancer Society, other scientific groups and the Tea Council, representing the tea industry.

The Reuters story began, “Solid evidence is mounting that drinking tea can prevent cell damage that leads to cancer, heart disease and perhaps other ills, scientists said on Tuesday.”

Reuters went on to say the Department of Agriculture had reported on a study suggesting (the word used by Reuters) that tea drinking can reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol. And it said the U.S.D.A.’s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland, had tested eight men and eight women who agreed to eat and drink for several weeks only what they were given at the lab. As a result, the director of the lab said, drinking tea had lowered their low-density lipoprotein (“bad” cholesterol) up to ten percent.

Although the broadcast script said researchers found drinking tea can reduce “bad” cholesterol, here’s what you and I would find by reading Reuters:

Only 16 people were studied.
And for only a few weeks.
They ate only a special diet. And they experienced an average lowering of “bad” cholesterol by only up to 10 percent.
The study only suggested certain benefits. Possible benefits.

Hardly the stuff of headlines. And a news item on a network newscast is equivalent to a page-one story across the country.

Speaking of only (and please don’t use that kind of transition), if only the editor had asked the writer of the script, “Can you give me one good reason we should broadcast this–only one?” Or if only the anchor had asked the producer. If only.

The Reuters article also told of another report at the day-long symposium: a researcher at the University of Arizona and the Arizona Cancer Center said she had tested 140 smokers to see whether drinking tea could affect levels of chemicals associated with DNA damage. The trial looked at a chemical, 8-OhDG, which Reuters said is found in urine and linked to damage of DNA. For four months, the volunteers drank water, black tea or green tea. At the end of the trial, the researcher said, her team found that those drinking only green tea underwent a 25 percent decrease in their 8-OhDG, an apparently favorable outcome.

But the Reuters health and science correspondent, Maggie Fox, ended her 542-word article by cautioning, “Much more research [emphasis added] would be needed to see if lowering levels of 8-OhDG, or other markers of DNA damage, is actually associated with a lower risk of cancer.”

Another account of the symposium was even more cautious. Several hours before Reuters moved its article, the Tea Council—a trade group that promotes tea–wrote a press release distributed on the PR Newswire at 9 a.m. The release said circumspectly:

“The results of a new clinical study suggest [emphasis added] that tea consumption may [emphasis added] decrease LDL [‘bad’] cholesterol by 10 percent when combined [emphasis added] with a ‘Step 1’ type diet, moderately low in fat and cholesterol, as described by the American Heart Association and the National Cholesterol Education Program. The study, conducted at the USDA Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, MD, is the first investigation of tea in which the subjects’ diets were precisely controlled by having them eat meals prepared at the research facility.” (The acting director of the U.S.D.A. Center then, Dr. Joseph Judd, a research chemist, told me the other day that that paragraph is “pretty accurate.”)

Although the Tea Council’s press release did mention the special diet followed by the trial’s participants, the release didn’t bother with other details of the trial, details that would dilute the findings further: only 16 people, and for only a few weeks.

Sixteen people might have entered the trial, but the abstract of the study says 15 finished the first two three-week stints. And for the third and final phase of the trial, the number of participants in the three-week stint slipped to 12. The abstract also acknowledges the role of Unilever, which Dr. Judd told me provided “the treatment beverages and partial financial support for the study.” He identified the “treatment beverages” as tea and placebos. Unilever makes Lipton tea.

But even when tea is accompanied by a healthful diet, the possible benefits may be limited. The Tea Council’s press release did not quote or paraphrase the key judgment in the abstract for the U.S.D.A. study: “Based on this study, we conclude that black tea consumption as part of a[n] NCEP [National Cholesterol Education Program] Step 1 type diet may reduce blood lipid risk factors for CVD [cardiovascular disease] in mildly hypercholesterolemic adults [emphasis added].” So they think tea–with a special diet–may help if your cholesterol is slightly high.

The network newswriter had a tough assignment, even with the Reuters article about “solid evidence” that it said was “mounting” (you might call it “making a mounting out of a molehill”): he had to boil down all the information into broadcast copy that ran about 15 seconds. (I found no coverage by The Associated Press.)

Not long after I heard that script on the air, I spent some time with Ed Bliss in Manhattan, and I decided to conduct an experiment of my own: I asked him to write a 15-second script based on the Reuters story. He had been a newswriter (for Edward R. Murrow), an editor (for Walter Cronkite), author (Writing News for Broadcast) and a college teacher (American University). I gave him only the Reuters story. I didn’t tell him about the broadcast script of Sept. 24, nor did I mention my curiosity about it. Ed probably figured I was up to something or other, but he was too polite to ask.

A few days later, after he returned home to Alexandria, Virginia, he e-mailed his script and gave me permission to use it:

“Drinking tea may be good for your health. Researchers have found evidence–no proof yet–that tea has ingredients that lower the risk of heart disease and cancer. This finding, announced today, is based on tests conducted by the University of Arizona and the Department of Agriculture.” (47 words; the network’s was 41.)

Ed had realized the story was flimsy: his first verb was may. And he stressed: no proof. (In late November, Ed died at age 90.)

But the network’s script said in its second sentence the efficacy of tea was proved:
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Are…out tonight is weaker than dormitory tea. Because are and other forms of to be don’t convey action or movement, we can’t tell whether the new studies came out an hour ago, a week ago, or a month ago. Hundreds of thousands of studies are out tonight (see for yourself in the Library of Congress). In fact, the studies mentioned in that broadcast script did not come out that night. Another problem with that script: no clue as to who conducted the studies or the name of the scientific body or journal that reported them.

Better (if the assertions in the CBS script were true and newsworthy): “Several new studies said today green and black tea may be good for you.” (At least, I got rid of there are.)

Is there a lesson to be learned from our trip down the tea trail? Yes: Don’t swallow everything you hear.

Let’s not stir up a brewhaha, but our inquiry also raises another critical question about tea: Am I getting enough?

READER REAX:

“We run those stories because they are promotable, and teasable. Producers and reporters are so desperate for ‘health headlines’ as they are sometimes called, they run stories that contradict each other and don’t really answer the real questions.”
— Scott Wickersham
anchor, WIVB-TV, Buffalo

*

Excellent breakout on the tea story. Always afraid of small samplings and big announcements. Had rule at MedStar Television that we focus on testing of more than 100 subjects before we broadcast a story involving a claim.Also, we noted the number of people involved and where the study was done. Said no to a lot of juicy items that would have teased wobbly results.

We had 75 stations to provide medical and health news as a syndicated service. Also, we had a program called HealthMatters to prepare in 25 markets. In the medical world, being wrong is peer-sensitive and often damnable. This is not true in the research universe, where grants and claims attract contracts and big financial support.

The last daily safeguard was using the word advances over the word breakthrough. Watch television health segments around the country and you will hear the word breakthrough many more times than advances. Find it to be a television news weakness in broadcasting a sense of completion over a work in progress. And, it may not be true. Penicillin was a breakthrough.

As for the bundling, put three stories, graphics and video into a :90 second effort. As time passed in the early to mid ’90’s, the news directors favored :20 second stories over :30. The wording became even more precise.

Thanks for your efforts. Always worth reading.

— Michael D.Sullivan
MDSullivan & Associates
tybeemick@aol.com