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'The Great Debate About Cholesterol': Medical Controversy and the News Media

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Nepean

This note analyses features of the debate over the importance of controlling dietary cholesterol to prevent heart disease as it was reported in the Australian news media. It examines the position of the news media as sites for the struggle over meaning, at which a number of competing discourses are expressed and negotiated, and acknowledges the complexities of the tensions and often contradictory interests with which news media workers and organisations wrestle when constructing the news. It is concluded that while the controversial nature of the cholesterol debate was acknowledged in the news texts, the reproduction of dominant discourses concerning individual responsibility for bodily control and lifestyle choices was achieved by glossing the debate as a medical controversy rather than as a serious challenge to health promotion orthodoxy.

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 3, 334-339 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/144078339403000307


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