News Comment #6
Comments(1) For this week’s News Comment I read the article from the New York Times called “A ‘Pacemaker for the Brain’: No Treatment Helped Her Depression — Until This” by Pam Belluck. It talked about the story of a woman named Sarah who has tried over 20 different methods to help massage her depression. None of them worked until this most recent attempt. She was the first participant in this experimental therapy. It works by a matchbook-sized device sending pulses of electrical stimulation in the brain.
For starters, there really were no issues with the writing of this article. It wasn’t objective or anything like that. It merely delivered the facts about the story/trial. I also thought the writer did a nice job explaining a topic that in some cases is very sensitive. However, it was nice to see articles about depression and mental health in the news. I think it’s good that mental health issues are being talked about more and more on such a large platform. My only “issue” if I were to have one is that the article does get long, but that is nothing new for an NYT article.
American media doesn’t do science well. Most reporters don’t have science and math backgrounds, so the stories usually end up simplistic. The NYT can afford to have specialists, which makes for much better stories–on just about every beat.