Health Media Bias

I seem to have kicked the hornet's nest recently with a post to the Association of Health Care Journalists about bias against complementary and alternative therapies. Wow! I didn't expect the outburst of responses claiming there was no such thing. Fortunately there were some other brave souls who joined the discussion after that round to respond that yes, in fact, there was clearly a bias in reporting against CAM.

If the buggy makers had been in charge of evaluating the effectiveness of the automobile we'd still be riding horses. The media prefers to turn a blind eye to the influence of money and politics in their coverage of health care. They prefer to rationalize how we spend more on health care than any other nation on earth but rank so poorly compared to other industrialized countries. They bury stories that taint the world of mainstream medicine as if it were heresy.

How can they report on something that they know so little about is my first question? Why don't they demand the same level of research and "proof" for mainstream medicine? I guess with so many jobs disappearing today they prefer to keep their eyes closed and their heads down because most health "reporters" today are simply reporting what the hospitals or drug companies sponsoring the news tell them to cover.