‘News’ channels create health risks
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has come under fire lately for not doing a thorough job of protecting the public health, allowing the sale of dangerous pills, bad eggs and all that. In response to this criticism, the agency has begun to exercise greater diligence in searching out overlooked hazards.
When folks in the audiences of FOX News and MSNBC turned up puking sick in Peoria, rumors on the street verified that the FDA started conducting a series of secret investigations on the health of the regular listeners of these partisan stations. FDA investigators were tempted to include CNN because CNN exaggerates but they dismissed that idea because the project already looked too complex.
Thus far, according to sources close to the investigation, preliminary research found that the rate of suicides is almost twice as high among watchers of FOX News and MSNBC than is found in adults addicted to Sesame Street.
A source close to Dr. Butron Scallion, head of Innovative Research Designs, reported that the FDA had developed a hostility meter to probe deeper into partisan minds. Unfortunately, it failed because FOX and MSNBC viewers could not be measured. The meter was not calibrated to handle such high levels of hate and anger. Redesign of the meter was contracted out to British Petroleum.
As one would expect, 93 per cent of those watching the two partisan “news” channels had blood pressure ranked as Stage 3 Hypertension (that’s 180/110), with the remaining seven per cent at the Stage 4 Cemetery level.
The most interesting discovery, according to confidential sources, had to do with the new device that measured gullibility. This detector measured human discernment with electronic nodes fastened to the thinking part of the brain. Preliminary findings indicate that 83 per cent of the watchers of FOX and 79 per cent of those viewing MSNBC are highly susceptible to believing anything that starts with “they say” or “Congress is considering,” whether the statements make sense or not.
Now every good experiment requires a control some standard against which to validate the experimental findings. To provide this standard, the FDA diverted money intended to research the relationship between leafy spurge and the color of milk and started a television station in Omaha. The station reported only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The channel was simply called “The Truth Channel” so everyone would be forewarned, especially folks devoted to FOX and MSNBC.
After one month on the air, The Truth had enough listeners to do some reliable sampling. Amazingly, those watching The Truth had 29 per cent more suicides, 39 per cent more mental illness, and 34 more cases of Stage 4 Cemetery high blood pressure than did the watchers of FOX and MSNBC.
In a closed-door meeting, top FDA scientists voted 13 to one to declare FOX and MSNBC hazardous to the public health but the FDA Review Board decided to bury the research. It was true, the Board argued, that FOX and MSNBC contributed to an unhealthy public mind but the truth was even worse.
They say this whole report is true.
Omdahl is a UND professor emeritus in political science and a former lieutenant governor of North Dakota.