An extensive 30-second study conducted by Business Mobile has found that mobile phone press releases cause front page headlines in the Daily Express.
This week the Express found the latest press release on mobile phones that ticked all the right boxes and duly splashed it all over the front page.
To help readers identify these “stories” we’ve constructed a quick guide to Express mobile phone headlines;
New mobile phones health threat - Just 30 minutes a day raises cancer risk.
a) You’ve never heard of the organisation – “campaign group International EMF Collaborative” – CHECK!
b) The organisation is somehow linked with some very strange protest groups – RadiationResearch is a group campaigning for an end to “electrosmog” for people who are allegedly sensitive to the presence of EMF fields. PowerWatch is an anti-wireless/anti-powerline group. – CHECK!
c) The comment has been lying around for weeks but the Express has a few Diana stories to recycle first – “EMF Collaborative commentary on the INTERPHONE results Publication Date: 17th May 2010”- CHECK!
d) People in the home counties will probably believe it if the font size is big enough – CHECK!
e) There’s no other news and they can’t think of any other pro-BP anti-Obama headlines this week – CHECK!
Typically while they shout very loudly about the EMF groups “findings” they then completely negate the entire story by quoting Cancer Research’s, head of health information, Ed Young who says,
“The majority of studies in people have found no link between mobile phones and cancer, national brain cancer rates have not increased in proportion to skyrocketing phone use and there are still no good explanations for how mobile phones could cause cancer.”
Makes you proud to be British. For more EMF baiting see Ben Acre’s Bad Science website http://www.badscience.net/index.php?s=emf