There was a spot on the Channel Ten late news in Australia tonight, on
the discovery of stem cells in breastmilk. The segment showed an
interview with Mark Cregan, apparently filmed at the current conference
in Perth, with lots of prominent Medela marketing in the background (but
no shot of the actual brand name that I could see).

They did show two mother/baby pairs breastfeeding, but the only aired
comment from a mother was her talking about how painful it was and
saying "but I persevered because I knew it would be good for the baby".

What really stood out, however, was the jarring and gratuitous bottle
shot in the middle of the footage. In the middle of the segment was a
shot, completely out of context, showing a woman in a kitchen (no baby
in sight) testing a huge bottle of milk on her wrist.

How do these news stations manage to twist such an interesting,
good-news story into something so breastfeeding-negative? Since I don't
for a second trust the mass media for unbiased or independent
journalism, I started wondering whether Ch. Ten has financial ties to
big pharmaceutical/nutrition industry.

Five minutes of poking around revealed that Network Ten Holdings is
majority owned by Canwest, which has been mounting a legal challenge in
Canada to overturn a ban on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical
companies[1] - because it "discriminates against its business
interests". I wonder what else they're involved in.

Lara Hopkins

[1] source: http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/176/1/19

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