ABSTRACT
Following earlier attempts to tackle some of these issues with respect to one particular area of health care, namely the controversy surrounding the use of benzodiazepine tranquillisers (Gabe and Bury 1988; Bury and Gabe 1990; Gabe and Bury 1996), we attempt, in this chapter, to begin to address the broader issue of how far the media, specifically television, represent a more challenging view of medicine, both in terms of the latter’s knowledge base and of its professional practice. We also address the question of how health and medicine have come to play a large part in media programming.
