Thursday, 02/21/02

It's no shocker when a study is formulated with the sole purpose of generating a bit of frothy wire copy with an attention-grabbing headline, and as part of the same ecosystem, frothy headlines often percolate up Yahoo's list of recent most-emailed wire traffic. The story du jour covers a study highlighting the frisky sexual habits of people over forty, crudely broken down by nationality.

If this were building toward a weak joke, the punchline would be, "Of course, the study was funded by Pfizer", and of course, the study really was funded by Pfizer. The Reuters journo-monkey understands full well that he or she is being played for free advertising before a word is written. So why write this story? And if you're going to write the story, why pretend that the Pfizer connection isn't important, or might be just a coincidence? Is that "balance"? 08:04PM «

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