One of my earliest adventures in PR involved relaunching a certain publication to make it appeal to ”the modern woman”. The editorial team had been cultivating a brand new “Daily Mail sensibility” which they were keen to plug, so the editor and I were charged with thrashing out a definition for the press release. We eventually went with: ”a sensationalist angle with a reassuring tone”.

It’s a sensibility which has served Associated Newspapers well: there is a certain audience which loves nothing better than getting worked up over a good ol’ scare story before a heart-warming conclusion drops them back into their reclining armchairs with a comforting bump. Try and experience the effect for yourself with the following examples:  A natural winner ;The boy with 11 tumours who was sent home to die… and survives after grandparents’ alternative therapy treatments; Half baby half tumour (but lovely now!): doesn’t it just warm your cockles?

If not, then take heart: the response to one of Jeni Barnett’s recent LBC shows suggests that you are not alone. The 1st February 2009 show served as a platform for Barnett to crow about her opposition to vaccination, backing up her claims with stories of how she’d defied the judgements of GPs, angry parents and the media to raise three healthy children. She was clearly taken aback when she didn’t receive unanimous support from the listeners phoning in.

During the broadcast it was easy for her to silence her critics by shouting over their reasonable and well-informed comments (or by simply cutting them off) but online the critics have been somewhat harder to fend off. Here the charge has been led by  Ben Goldacre, whose recent blog post on the broadcast exposed the flaws in Barnett’s arguments by presenting them unedited. Barnett may have been assured of her stance on vaccination, but she and LBC showed less conviction when their lawyers ordered Dr Goldacre to remove the clip from his blog.

Why should a broadcaster do this when they’ve been so keen to get their views to a wider audience? Perhaps those views seem questionable in hindsight, and even those desperate for an audience have to admit it. Perhaps Barnett simply realised she wasn’t going to get the backup she had anticipated, not even from old allies of the anti-vaccination lobby like the Mail and the Express.

We should expect such u-turns while sensationalist stories continue to draw audiences. As long as people prefer a bit of drama to cold, dry facts, presenters like Jeni Barnett will continue to push their buttons with dangerous-but-entertaining misinformation. For now, people enjoy scare stories and heart-warming tales of survival. Who knows,  maybe they’re even healthy in their own way: a certain audience seems to get a kick out of this whole controlled-rage-followed-by-a-comforting-drop-in-blood-pressure thing. Perhaps there’s a form of alternative therapy in all of this.