Well, let's move on. Another complaint to the ACMA came to our attention last week. A month ago, WIN TV in Wollongong aired a news story about a measles outbreak in South-West Sydney. It started off well enough:

Michaela Gray: 40 cases in two and a half months, the Macarthur region is facing an outbreak of measles of worrying proportions. ... Dr Cathryn Archinal: as doctors we recommend that everyone is immunised. — WIN News Illawarra, 16th August, 2012

But the doctor's advice was then contradicted by this...

Michaela Gray: There remains heated discussion about possible links between the jab and the development of autism. Meryl Dorey: All vaccinations in the medical literature have been linked with the possibility of causing autism, not just the measles/mumps/rubella vaccine. Michaela Gray: Choice groups are calling for greater research into the measles vaccine — WIN News Illawarra, 16th August, 2012

'Choice groups'. They actually only quoted one group, which claims that it's in favour of the public having a choice. But Meryl Dorey's deceptively -named Australian Vaccination Network is in fact an obsessively anti-vaccination pressure group that's immunised itself against the effect of scientific evidence.

Dorey's claim about the medical literature linking vaccination and autism is pure, unadulterated baloney.

On our website is a long statement by the NSW Director of Health Protection, Dr Jeremy McAnulty. He says that...

Any link between measles vaccine and autism has been conclusively discredited by numerous in-depth studies and reviews by credible experts, including the World Health Organisation, the American Academy of Paediatrics and the UK Research Council. — Dr Jeremy McAnulty, Director of Health Protection, NSW Health, 28th September, 2012

The NSW Minister for Health, Jillian Skinner, told state parliament last week that ...

The Australian Vaccination Network has not provided accurate information to parents about the risks and benefits of immunisation.) — NSW Parliament, Jillian Skinner, NSW Minister for Health, 26th September, 2012

So why on earth, we asked WIN TV, did it include the AVN's misleading claims in a news story about a measles outbreak?

WIN TV couldn't find time to answer that question. But it wrote this to a viewer who complained :

The story presented was accurate, fair and balanced and presented the views of the medical practitioners and of the choice groups. — Shirley Brown, Group Business Director, 4th September, 2012

Medical practitioners - choice groups. One opinion as valid as the other. It's a classic example of what many - especially despairing scientists - call 'false balance' in the media. As the British Medical Journal put it last year in an editorial about the "debate" in the UK :

the media's insistence on giving equal weight to both the views of the anti-vaccine camp and to the overwhelming body of scientific evidence ...made people think that scientists themselves were divided over the safety of the vaccine, when they were not. — British Medical Journal, When balance is bias, Christmas Edition, 2011

To put it bluntly, there's evidence, and there's bulldust. It's a journalist's job to distinguish between them, not to sit on the fence and bleat 'balance'. Especially when people's health is at risk.

That's my view. We'll let you know what the ACMA rules some time next year.

For more on this, and our other stories, visit our website. Until next week, goodnight.