JOURNALISM AND OTHER INFLUENCES: Abstract.

Presentation by Beverley Beech, Honorary Chair of the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS).

A major source of information about childbirth is obtained from newspapers, magazines, films and television. Newspapers rarely undertake an in-depth analysis of issues in maternity care, but are driven by reportage and responses to sensational cases. Any such issue in the media has to be accompanied by a comment from a 'Mrs Smith' who describes her experience, thereby highlighting the message.

AIMS, the NCT, and the Birth Centre organisations spend a great deal of time responding to journalists who want to speak to a woman who has have a specific closely defined experience. The wider political implications of that experience are of no interest to them.

While childbirth magazines take a much more informative approach to caesarean sections, newspapers have allowed certain women journalists to promote the 'wonders' of caesarean sections while at the same time they denigrate women who wish to have a normal birth. Headlines such as 'Natural born fanatics' and, of those who promote normal birth, 'A noisy group of lentil-eating earth goddesses with a nutty fad' are fairly typical examples.

Radio, film and television portrayals of birth demonstrate a complete lack of interest in normal birth. In Coronation Street Fiona went into labour a month early, and East Enders Tiffany is rushed to hospital where the baby does not breathe when it is born. All good drama. When a perfectly normal birth is portrayed it occurs to a rebel member of the Archers who gives birth during a bender. Clearly, normal birth is only for the hippies of this world and not for any ordinary woman.

Childbirth is portrayed as painful, uncontrollable and dangerous, and this view is given full rein in films. From 'Gone with the Wind' to 'Dracula' childbirth has to be portrayed as dramatic, painful and, even better, they reinforce the message that it is dangerous by killing off the mother.

Having undermined the confidence of two generations of women the media have enthusiastically and uncritically supported the idea that a caesarean section is a safe, easy option. For the busy woman, it is promoted as a perfectly acceptable means of organising one's life and ensuring that there is the shortest gap possible between giving birth and rushing back behind the desk, while the child is farmed out to a nanny.

The risks to mother and baby of caesarean sections are rarely mentioned. Their safety is judged by mere survival, and long term morbidity is never evaluated. The media's role in promoting caesarean sections, and their failure properly to investigate and question the current unacceptably high levels of this major surgery, have contributed to women's lack of knowledge of the risks they run in giving birth in large centralised obstetric units.

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