Article What the Media gets wrong about CAM (complimentary & alternative medicine)

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https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critic...-about-cam

INTRO: There must be a template for this.

Time and time again, I have seen journalists cover so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in a way that is so similar, it’s making me think they must teach that template in journalism school.

It’s a story structure that sounds good at first. It aims to be balanced in giving voice to both patients and practitioners, as well as proponents and skeptics. It uses storytelling to grab the reader’s attention. All the ingredients are seemingly there to cover the topic responsibly.

I was recently interviewed by a CBC journalist on the topic of traditional Chinese medicine (which is nowhere near as traditional as its name implies), and in the process I ended up squeezed into that template. (Article here, video here.) And that’s a problem, not just for me but for anyone seeing a piece of media hoping to truly understand what the evidence says about the benefits of CAM.

Here's the template.

• The Protagonist. Open with a named patient who has an illness and is using the CAM intervention. Alternatively, open with a named practitioner and showcase their amazing clinic.
  
• The Believers. Quote well-regarded people who believe in this CAM intervention and who will make unverified claims to its benefits. They can also explain the pre-scientific belief system that underlies it, which the journalist can then repeat in a non-judgmental, anthropological way.
  
• The Researcher. Find a researcher who is willing to say that they don’t fully believe in this CAM but they’re interested in researching it because it might prove to work. Importantly, this researcher must act as if we have zero studies into this CAM and we’re starting fresh. The goal is research-oriented open-mindedness.
  
• The Token Skeptic. Open a paragraph with “but some are wary” or “but not everyone agrees,” and distill a 45-minute conversation with an evidence-based skeptic into a single paragraph.
  
• A Note of Hope. End the article by returning to The Protagonist and including a statement about the untapped and promising possibilities of this CAM intervention.
  

Once you understand this template, you will never read another health story the same way again. This skeleton will glow through the flesh of the article... (MORE - details, no ads or few)