MediaWatch: December 1994

Janet Cooke Award: CBS Packs Story with Emotional Anecdotes, Dire Predictions, Liberal Advocacy Research

Are We Starving the Elderly to Death?

The holiday season is a dependable launching point for media reports on hunger in America -- and so is a Republican resurgence in Congress. A wave of hunger stories hit the media in late November, underlining the need for more federal spending despite the lack of definitive national estimates on the problem. For a dissent-free Sunday Morning sermon on the need for more funding for federal food programs, CBS reporter David Culhane earned the December Janet Cooke Award.

Host Charles Osgood struck a religious theme introducing the November 27 segment: "A verse from the Bible would not be out of place considering the day of the week and the hour. This is from the Psalms. `Cast me not off in this time of old age. Forsake me not when I am grown weak.' Are we casting off the old among us? You might think at first it would not be necessary even to ask such a question."

Culhane then promoted his upcoming story: "In this nation of vast resources, the stark truth is that millions of elderly citizens are going hungry or are malnourished because they are poor or too weak to shop and cook, here in Fort Worth, Texas and around the country. This Sunday morning we will see the grim reality of waiting lists for Meals on Wheels for the very first time because federal funding has not kept up with the rising cost of food and the swelling population of older people."

Unfortunately, Culhane and Osgood raised more questions than they answered. Who is casting off the elderly? How many are clinically malnourished? Culhane never provided any statistics on federal Meals on Wheels funding or the inflation rate for food. He didn't prove that Meals on Wheels programs have never had a waiting list until now, or any proof of clinical malnutrition. Culhane also left out critics of more spending, devoting 14 soundbites to bureaucrats and beneficiaries of food programs.

Culhane began the story like a commercial: "Meals on Wheels, certainly one of the most successful programs ever designed to help older people in need. Last year alone, some 827,000 elderly people had a hot meal delivered, people too infirm to shop and cook for themselves, often too poor to buy their own food. Since the program combining federal and private funds was fully mobilized more than two decades ago, there's been a general assumption that no old people had to go hungry. But that is no longer the case. For the first time, across the country there are waiting lists for Meals on Wheels."

Clinton HHS Undersecretary Fernando Torres-Gil enhanced the sense of crisis: "We are literally talking about people's lives, whether they will become sick and die because of malnutrition and poor health all because they couldn't get at least one meal or have adequate nutrition. This is a life and death matter." Later, Culhane repeated that tone: "Carla Jutson, the executive director of Meals on Wheels here [in Ft. Worth], keeps track of each case. She thinks her decisions are like military triage."

CBS also interviewed Martha Burt of the liberal Urban Institute, "which first documented the growing crisis of hunger among older people. She thinks other forms of aid would help relieve their hunger." Burt plugged for more spending on other programs: "So if we paid for prescription drugs for the elderly, then they would have the money they now use for medications to buy food. If we paid more for housing for people who are still paying for housing, who will be the poorest people, and the renters, they could then use that money for food."

Culhane forwarded the Urban Institute study: "Current estimates indicate that as many as 4.9 million older citizens are either going hungry or are malnourished to some extent and that at least two thirds of needy older people are not being reached by federal food assistance programs." Culhane concluded: "The political forecast now warns of a storm of budget cutbacks, perhaps even for core hunger programs. Those who are trying to help ask us to remember that we are not just talking about today's older people."

The CBS story succeeded in creating an emotional wallop in favor of food programs, but omitted a number of facts that are important to the story. First, none of the bureaucrats in the field have statistical knowledge quantifying the number of elderly people suffering from hunger. The Urban Institute study, the only proof cited in the story, was conducted by mail, which is much less scientific than most polls since the participants select themselves. As Newsweek's Laura Shapiro admitted to MediaWatch earlier this year: "Your basic point, that all of these studies lack a lot of scientific depth, is true." Culhane also left out the Urban study's funder: Philip Morris, which owns Kraft Foods.

CBS obscured the definition of hunger and malnutrition. Culhane claimed up to 4.9 million are "going hungry or are malnourished to some extent." But Burt's study did not actually measure malnutrition, but "food insecurity." As Burt explained: "Some people never show the long-term physical signs of malnutrition, yet experience the physical and emotional stresses of hunger." Burt hailed the idea to "go beyond very restrictive medical definitions of malnutrition" to a "social definition" of hunger, "even if the shortage is not prolonged enough to cause health problems."

Burt's report found 2.5 to 4.9 million may suffer "food insecurity." If, among other questions, respondents answered "yes" to whether they had to choose between buying food or paying for rent, utilities, or medicine at any time in the previous six months, they had "food insecurity."

Torres-Gil had no study on which to base his comments on how this is "a life or death matter," or, as he later asserted: "The development of waiting lists have probably occurred most dramatically in the last couple of years." Culhane did not explain that Torres-Gil's office is waiting for proof from a study from Princeton University expected next summer.

Despite his rhetoric about starving old people, Torres-Gil actually wants to expand the federal elderly hunger programs to the non-needy. There are no income requirements to receive Meals on Wheels, although rules currently target the neediest and some contribute for their meals. A November 4, 1993 story in The Orlando Sentinel quoted Torres-Gil telling the National Association of Social Workers that the passage of the Clinton health plan meant "That problem [of income requirements] is erased because with the new home and community-based program, anyone is eligible regardless of income." Torres-Gil is not merely seeking to add the needy to his waiting lists, but the rest of the elderly.

Culhane did not answer repeated calls from MediaWatch. But this kind of reporting -- emotional anecdotes, dire predictions, and the flacking of liberal advocacy group research -- serves only to advertise for an increased government burden. It propagandizes, but it fails to inform.

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