Cancer and Media

     This week I took a look at the coverage of cancer (second on the list of the CDC'S causes of American male deaths) on both Men's Health and MSN's websites. It is worth noting that on MSN's main health page men are fairly represented. Most articles (there were six lead stories), some were about children, were unisex. They concerned health topics such as diet cola and cancer in a way that included all people not just women or just men. Because this blog concerns men's health exclusively I dug a little deeper. It is a little harder to find MSN's men's health page than that of Men's Health obviously, but MSN is designed to appeal to a wider audience.
     Of the articles on MSN's health page not one covered cancer. Now, this might not be entirely fair to MSN. They might rotate their articles on a very regular basis and have many less articles when compared to Men's Health, but the fact remains that as pertaining to strictly men their information flow of male cancer was nonexistent. Their featured articles were, "How to eat like a (cave)man" (this articles subheading was, "Did cavemen have abs"), "10 ways to find more energy", and "7 foods for better sex". The focus on MSN's page, like that of the majority of Men's Health, is to promote a sexy approach to being healthy, and not to address major health concerns. Apparently sex sells. Who knew?
     In contrast to MSN, Men's Health health news section held 204 stories on hand. The first article for the second biggest killer of US men was sixty-three articles into the list. Sixty-Three. The title of the article was, "How Exercise can Help Cure Cancer". The article didn't make any claims that exercise could cure cancer alone or use extreme sources, but it was, and you'll have to excuse me, sixty-third on the list. It wasn't about how to prevent cancer, or about what might cause cancer that you could avoid, but that exercise might boost your system enough to help fight cancer. It was actually a good article, but I asked myself, "Self, how far down the list is an article that actually promotes not getting cancer through being informed?"
     I delved on and got bored at story One hundred and twenty and searched their site. Seriously, who even goes that far on their site? The first story was titled "Cancer-Proof Your Body". The article was based on the research of Gary Stoner, Ph.D from THE Ohio State University medical center. The basis of the information was this, don't go to smoking establishments (second hand smoke is bad for you), and eat/drink a lot of fruit. This information was well informed and well represented. Steve Mazzucchi gave tips about how to apply the research to the common man's life as well. The fact hangs though, that Men's cancer is a very underrepresented subject in men's health news, as these two sources go at least.