It's not all the Mail's fault

Search for 'anorexia' on the Daily Mail's website and you get sixty pages full of emaciated images and lowest weight headlines pop up on your screen, followed by all the gruesome details of the minuscule calorie intakes of 'death bed' anorexics.

Frustrating, yes. Dangerous, most definitely, but are they the only culprits in the sensationalist media circus that is the reporting of eating disorders. No.

The Mail Online is littered with bad coverage of anoreixia

As a media volunteer for Beat, the UK's Eating Disorder charity, I find myself stumbling across so many bad examples of eating disorders coverage in the press, on what seems like a daily basis. But as a journalist, I find it even more frustrating that my fellow 'media lurvies' aren't changing their extremely bad habits.

We KNOW that sensationalism sells, if it's not anorexia, it's drugs, if it's not drugs, it's booze, if it's not that, it's teenager having 30 children under 3, or some other monstrosity of a 'shock factor' headline.

But what I am starting to catch on to, and this is where I think the REAL problem lies, is that somewhere along the line a vulnerable sufferer's felt pressured to sell their story to a journalist at the paper or magazine itself or more often than not, to a news agency. There's always someone BEHIND the headline.

The last few articles I've come across and flagged up as completely throwing Beat's media guidelines out the window, haven't been written by staff AT the paper or magazine, but by reporters at these 'news' agencies, which then sell copy to a whole host of publications.

"Journalists often think these are shocking when in reality they are

potentially harmful to people affected by eating disorders." (BEAT)

This is even more dangerous.

Why? Because a single writer sits at their computer, hashes out a poor piece of journalism along with skeletal images of someone with anorexia. A commissioning editor at the said paper picks up on it, thinks it sells and pops it online, in the paper, tweets about it, adds links to Facebook and the damage is done.

We all need a few extra pounds in our pockets, right? So why NOT sell our stories of torment and struggle to a pushy writer, why not email over our lowest weights, BMI and how little we ate?

 I'll tell you why, because every person who thinks providing that information is helping raise awareness of eating disorders should. know. better. It doesn't help and never will.

The media is splashed with sensationalism. 

So, solutions? I think more needs to be done to educate people WITH an eating disorder in how to handle journalists. Yes, let's talk about anorexia, let's tell people what it's all about. But please dear God, let's stop handing out images and figures of our darkest days. We know these stories don't cause eating disorders, it's much more serious than that, but we DO how 'triggering' they can be and we CAN say NO. 

I'm fortunate to have friends who work on national newspapers and weekly magazines who are taking note. Having watched me go through my own battle with anorexia, and now my war on the coverage of eating disorders, are kicking up a fuss at work - and subtly (and less so sometimes) suggesting that Beat's guidelines are followed. Every little DOES help.

So yes, the Daily Mail are often rightly the target of my rants, but I do think suffers can do their bit too.

Let's get clued up and STOP selling sensationalist spin on anorexia, they will HAVE to wake up to the message at some point.

What Can YOU do?
If you spot a poor example of eating disorder coverage TELL Beat and flag it up or write to the paper. Journalists often have a by-line and the news agency will be credited too. Recent poor examples of anorexia copy have come from Hot Spot Media and News Team International.

A link to BEAT's Media Guidelines:- http://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-beat/media-centre/media-guidelines/

Journalists PLEASE take time to read through the guidelines. Eating disorders CAN be covered well.

Can we not face the reality of recovery?

We hear about eating disorders a lot in the media, we hear what causes them, what encourages them, who gets them, who's on a diet and who's dying. But wouldn't it be more refreshing to hear about recovery?

Not the recovery story that digs up ghosts of the past, but real, fighting, inspirational recovery stories.

The problem with a lot of the exposure eating disorders gets is that for those suffering it can further cement their disorders, for those in recovery, it can trigger old behaviours and thoughts and for those who have little or no understanding of the complexity of them, it does little to educate.

Magazines still do little to HELP ED awareness

Unfortunately there's still a massive bubble of stigma around anorexia, a superficial glance into the reality of what it's like to have it, sugar coated with the opinion that it's some sort of lifestyle choice, encouraged by the media. No, we're not over that, apparently. 

Any 'I survived anorexia' story in women's magazines or newspapers is more often and not covered in the same old way. With skeletal pictures, figures, weights and talk of calories and pounds. Personally, I think this angle  on eating disorder stories is getting old.

I can't help but ponder what it's be like if the media stopped talking about someone's anorexic past and switched to focusing on what it's like to FIGHT for recovery? 

Since February I've been involved in a pro-recovery project TEAM RECOVERY which helps inspire, raise awareness and support people in their own unique recovery journeys. Two friends and I were inspired by the growing support network forming on social networks at the end of 2011 and knew that #RecoveryNinja tag was a new way of expressing a FIGHT against eating disorders online. During Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2012 the ‘Team Recovery’ pro-recovery project was launched.

But, even getting exposure for Team Recovery, I was personally met with fellow journalists asking for lowest weight pictures,  dates, old diaries and 'suffering' angle on our own stories. They weren't interested in the three sixty people had applied to their lives, not interested in their battle, fight, war with the mind. They were totally uninterested in the concept of being RECOVERED, having beaten an eating disorder, instead they were focused on dragging up the darkest time in someone's life. 

The problem is, this helps no one. But why have we not realised this yet? 

Is the strength of a person to fight their own mind, the determination to grasp on to life not inspirational enough or do we just like a gawp at a dying, unhappy, withrawn, skeleton of a person instead? I know which I'd personally rather read. I also know which would be more helpful to reduce the stigma and improve society's understanding of mental health.... how refreshing would it be? 

On the Airwaves

I've been getting back to my original 'media' roots recently, taking a career 360 and getting involved with Stafford FM as the 'news junkie' on Stu Haycock's Stafford on Sunday' show. I can usually be heard ranting between 11-12 on a Sunday morning about the week's top news stories. 

It was working with Stu and the gang over a decade ago that led me down the journalism path and now, back in Stafford, I have found myself back 'on air', with lots to say and big opinions. 

You can listen to Stafford FM online HERE or download the TuneIn app on your mobile phone and the station is back on FM radio VERY SOON. Check out the Stafford FM Facebook and Twitter pages too...

I may have to dig out old shows soon, see if I've aged or improved in the last decade....