In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
The Chicago Sun-Times created controversy this month by hiring Jenny McCarthy—an actress-model, author, and activist who promotes the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism—to blog online five days a week and write a weekly print advice column about sex, love, dating, and parenting. (The USA Today story about it, taken from the press release, is here.) The Chicago native’s first print column appeared on October 28 in the Sun-Times’s new weekly style magazine, Splash.
It was the possibility that McCarthy might be writing parenting advice that most worried people. Despite popular support for the theory, science is certain: There is absolutely no link between vaccines and autism. But McCarthy, who started her career as a Playboy model and has been the host of an MTV show, is best known for promoting the idea that there is one. She is president of Generation Rescue and connected to AutismOne, both autism activist organizations that link vaccination to autism. After writing her memoir about her perhaps-autistic son, Louder than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism in 2007, she spoke about this supposed link on Oprah, Frontline, and Larry King Live.
According to Veronica Arreola, an opinion writer on feminism and women’s issues and the director of the Women in Science & Engineering Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, giving McCarthy yet another microphone is a problem. “She has built a career on anti-science rhetoric,” Arreola said in a phone interview. “She looks at her son and says, ‘Science tells me X, but I see Y, so I don’t believe science and neither should you.’ For someone of her stature to have a platform like this is really dangerous.”
Like Arreola, science writers across the country were upset. The headline for a blog post about McCarthy, written by a former medical writer at the San Jose Mercury News on the website ReportingOnHealth.com reads, “Chicago Sun-Times Hires Jenny McCarthy as Columnist. Science Weeps.” It was quickly retweeted by science writers and other journalists. Emily Willingham, a Pharma & Healthcare contributor at Forbes.com, writes, “If you’ve got an interest in autism, public health or critical thinking, that very name may have you wringing your hands - or slugging a nearby wall.” The science writers were doubly concerned because the Sun-Times already appeared to give McCarthy space back in May to promote her autism views.
But when I emailed with Susanna Negovan, Splash editor at the Sun-Times, she said that McCarthy was chosen to be a columnist because her light stories about motherhood, which she started writing occasionally in the spring, were a hit with readers. “Jenny will not be writing about vaccines or giving medical advice. The purpose of the advice column and blog is to entertain and engage our readers with real stories from a celebrity mom who has a loyal following in Chicago and beyond,” Negovan said. “Splash is held to the same journalism standards as any other feature section.”
This is all reassuring. Celebrities - or, let’s be honest, people - have all sorts of wacko beliefs. It is not untoward for one of them to be writing a light column in a style magazine. That McCarthy won’t be writing about vaccines is a relief to Michele Weldon, assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. But, she says, there’s yet another issue.
Weldon trains non-journalists to write op-eds as part of the OpEd Project, which has a mission to increase diversity of opinion in daily newspapers. In a phone interview, she said, “What disturbs me is that there is so much underreported and undiscovered valuable information and so many voices that need to be heard. This is just a waste of time. Use that ink and virtual space on the website to invite community leaders, the executive directors of nonprofits and other worthwhile causes to write about important issues of the day that critically impact the Chicago community. [McCarthy] already has enough of a platform.”
Hooray for Jenny! Not only is she beautiful, she is very smart and a protective mother that I absolutely love! She is a great spokesperson on the subject and anyone that has forgotten or never seen the Fronline show aired in October of 2010 "Vaccine War" should review it. Keep up the good work Jenny!
#1 Posted by Randy, CJR on Tue 30 Oct 2012 at 02:47 AM
Hey Jenny. I hope you post these numbers in the Sun-Times;
0.5 parts per billion (ppb) mercury = Kills human neuroblastoma cells (Parran et al., Toxicol Sci 2005; 86: 132-140).
2 ppb mercury = U.S. EPA limit for drinking water (http://www.epa. gov/safewater/ contaminants/ index.html# mcls).
20 ppb mercury = Neurite membrane structure destroyed (Leong et al., Neuroreport 2001; 12: 733-37). Think Alzheimer's!
200 ppb mercury = level in liquid the EPA classifies as hazardous waste based on toxicity characteristics.
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/tsd/mercury/regs.htm
700 ppb mercury = level of mercury in large predator fish.
25,000 ppb mercury = Concentration of mercury in multi-dose, Hepatitis B vaccine vials, administered at birth from 1991-2001 in the U.S.
50,000 ppb mercury = Concentration of mercury in multi-dose DTaP and Haemophilus B vaccine vials, administered 8 times in the 1990’s to children at 2, 4, 6, 12 and 18 months of age and currently “preservative” level mercury in multi-dose flu, H1N1, meningococcal and tetanus vaccines. This can be confirmed by simply analyzing the multi-dose vials.
#2 Posted by Maggy, CJR on Tue 30 Oct 2012 at 10:02 AM
Great news! With a court in Italy ruling the MMR vaccine as causal in a young boys "autism" and ordering compensation to the family, numerous injured and compensated children here in the US diagnosed with "autism" after vaccination, several studies demonstrating a correlation with vaccination, mercury, aluminum, and neurological injury, foreign DNA found in brains of two previously healthy girls that died abruptly after vaccination with HPV vaccine, and so much more, thank God, these injured individuals and families will have a voice!!! Please, Jenny! Exposé the deception!
#3 Posted by Indiana Nurse, CJR on Tue 30 Oct 2012 at 10:52 AM
CJR, you're doing your cause no good by arrogantly smearing people with whom you disagree. Read up on the concept of blow-back: there are consequences to govt policies and to the actions of those who defend those policies.
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 30 Oct 2012 at 09:52 PM
The fact that the Sun Times felt it had to hire a celebrity to increase readership rather than an actual trained journalist who might find amazing, untold stories is deeply depressing.
Even more depressing are the above commenters who ignore facts and real science to attack vaccinations -- you put us all in danger. Please move to a remote area so your frightening ignorance does not kill the rest of us.
#5 Posted by Average Jo, CJR on Wed 7 Nov 2012 at 06:50 PM
I think the headline really doesn't capture Jennifer's key point, which is sad. But it's a fabulous discourse on what we need for journalism: really? MORE Infotainment? CJR, could you please run the whole column on one page? It's so possible that many lost the killer walk off and for one graf, doesn't seem worth a jump!
#6 Posted by Catherine Behan, CJR on Wed 7 Nov 2012 at 08:48 PM
It just goes to show you that someone that takes their clothes off gets more notoriety and esteem than someone with integrity and intelligence!
#7 Posted by KB, CJR on Wed 2 Jan 2013 at 06:25 PM