Saturday 15 November 2008

Hannah Jones: press mis-representation

Hannah Jones is the young girl whose declining to undergo a heart transplant led the Primary Care Trust for her area to take legal steps to take her into care so that the operation could go ahead. The decision of the Primary Care Trust to drop the legal case after the intervention of child protection professionals was reported earlier this week. The events involved took place in the period July 2007 - February 2008, but have only just emerged in the public domain.

Today's Times reports concerns by doctors that the coverage of Hannah's case my have glamourised "transplant refusal", and have damaged the positive image of transplant surgery. They are concerned that this will discourage others from agreeing to transplant surgery, that it has been "hugely damaging for transplant patients".

Who is responsible for causing this concern? Hannah Jones and her family? The Primary Care Trust and the local hospital who first raised the possibility with the family that Hannah would be removed from the family to receive the treatment, and then followed it through to a High Court action? Or the news media?

It looks to me rather as if members of the medical profession started the chain of events - so it is a little bit much for other doctors to then express concern without recognising that some of their own colleagues should accept responsibility for creating the situation in the first place.

And then take this quality of reporting, taken from this same Times report. From the opening paragraph - and those who have undertaken media training will know that you try to say in your first paragraph enough to communicate the essence of your whole story in case the editor only uses your first paragraph (or, if you are a reader, you only read the first paragraph):


The courage of Hannah Jones, the 13-year old girl who has chosen to die rather than undergo a heart transplant ...

Well, no, Hannah has not chosen to die. She has declined one particular course of medical treatment. Later in the report, we find:


After speaking to a child protection officer, Hannah won her battle to die at home. "I just decided that there were too many risks and, even if I took them, there might be a bad outcome afterwards", she said. "There is a chance that I may be OK and there is also a chance that I may not be as well as I could be, but I am taking that chance".

This does not sound like the choosing to die of the first paragraph. The first paragraph grossly misrepresents the nature of the decision of the Jones' family.

But the mis-representation is directed in a particular direction ... and it is this that makes it a particularly dangerous mis-representation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just out of curiosity, have the Church always been happy with organ transplantation?

Joe said...

Pope Pius XII can be cited in favour of organ donation, and of the donation of a dead body for scientific research or training. He argues for due respect for the dead body as having been a house of the Holy Spirit and destined to resurrection; but organ or whole body donation is an act of charity towards those who are ill and may benefit from that donation.

Can anyone go back before Pius XII?