HEALTH MATTERS!

Queenslanders with even the slightest of heart conditions have been warned by a senior Queensland health official of the potentially lethal dangers of watching Nine News Queensland’s 6pm bulletins.

The grim assessment comes from the state’s deputy senior health officer, Dr Pratt (pictured), who is terribly concerned by the news program’s propensity to show viewers “heart stopping vision” as often as it can.

“People with healthy hearts can survive that organ shutting down momentarily; it will restart automatically after a short period with no lasting damage done,” Dr Pratt said.

“But that’s often not the case with people suffering even modest heart deterioration problems. Unless their family has a defibrillator on hand, death is often the result.

To understand Dr Pratt’s concerns, The Bug senior health reporter watched the last week’s Nine News Queensland 6pm bulletins. The image (at top and below) is from the bulletin last Friday during an ad break.

If one of the state’s leading physicians with over four decades of malpractice is right, at least we should commend Nine News on this occasion for at least giving people with heart problems fair warning.

On Sunday’s program, weekend presenter Mia Glover was not so careful when introducing a house-fire rescue.

Dr Pratt again: “And when you consider that it’s mostly older people who still read and watch legacy news outlets such as newspapers and electronic news platforms, the risks of losing a large number of Queenslanders are very real indeed, particularly as a large slice of that audience will suffer from heart arrhythmias, especially atrial fibrillation.”

Dr Pratt added that although Nine News Queensland anchors didn’t talk of “heart-stopping” videos every night – it just seemed that way – all of the Nine News Queensland presenters were frequently if unknowingly putting their audience in grave danger but the greatest risk was at the weekend with Mia Glover often alone in the chair.

“It’s not Ms Glover’s fault but any weekend news bulletin trying to fill a 60-minute program will by necessity show “heart-stopping” video of a vehicle collision or a train smash or a plane landing gone wrong or the like, for example, over and over and over again and not just the usual two or three times.

“Exposure of that level will kill.”

A spokesperson for Nine News Queensland dismissed Dr Pratt’s concerns over “a phrase we may use occasionally”.

“We do use other words such as “heart-breaking” which I note the good doctor has no problem with. (vision supplied)

“And even earlier in that first bulletin you highlighted at top, we used “shocking video”, “show-stopping moment” and “remarkable escape” long before that dashcam vision was aired. We also often use “incredible” too so why should viewers with heart issues be at all concerned about watching something they’ve been told simply can’t be believed?”

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