I tweeted to the presenter when I first saw this last Wednesday.
https://twitter.com/ssppeerroo/status/659483815010803712
I wanted to write to the parent company of "Buzz60" but last week was a rollercoaster ride and I never found the time, at least when I had any strength. I received no reply but noticed that this guy's tweets were like the style of the presentation--lowest common denominator packaging of pop culture stuff. I saw something about Britney Spears; Adele; red carpets; okay, fine. This guy was just doing his job, so it's not like he should be held to some journalistic standard that needs to be applied to science writers who regurgitate press releases from the usual suspects. But the title was so bad that I googled it. And as it turns out, it wasn't just a YouTube video.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/popc...drome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/vi-BBmxD85
I don't think this is something that was seen by masses of people. But it looks like "Buzz60" has a contract with certain local news affiliates' websites in the US. Whether or not this ever made air, I don't know. But in all cases these videos were easily available on people's local TV stations' news websites.
Cincinnati, OH
http://www.wlw
t.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Fort Smith, AR
http://www.4029tv.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Plattsburgh, NY
http://www.wptz.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Portland, ME
http://www.wmtw.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
West Palm Beach, FL
http://www.wpbf.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Oklahoma City, OK
http://www.koco.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Pittsburgh, PA
http://www.wtae.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Omaha, NE
http://www.ketv.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Manchester, NH
http://www.wmur.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Des Moines, IA
http://www.kcci.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
Louisville, KY
http://www.wlky.com/video/buzz60/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-may-not-be-a-chronic-illness/36101008
It goes without saying that Cincinnati and Pittsburgh are fairly large media markets. Oklahoma City, Louisville, and Omaha are all in the top 50 US cities in terms of population. West Palm Beach is no slouch; and I suspect that quite a few of the others are cities that are the largest towns for some distance.
This reminds me of the Natelson spinal fluid study--Schutzer et al, from around the time of PACE. There was some high-powered PR behind that one, prompting a segment on the national news--CBS, when Katie Couric was the anchor. I didn't think that segment did us any favors; it was a good counterbalance to the publicity surrounding PACE, but was more of a mild human-interest story that looked made to portray a middle-aged woman fiddling and fretting with a bucketful of supplements. There was a story, probably by a wire service, though I don't recall, that stuck out because it had a paragraph or two of comments by Suzanne Vernon--I think this is where she said that you can't just go around poking people in the spine, as this was the 'spinal fluid proteins' paper. I found that the story had made it onto local news affiliates' websites, way more than this video here. Dozens, maybe a hundred, I can't remember. I found it very odd, but it looked like these TV stations have a formula for what stories they bring to their website, probably in the hope that viewers will use the websites as a one-stop shop. That could very well be the case for the tech-challenged, the elderly, the infirm, and so on.
So I don't know exactly what to make of this; it's so cheesy it's almost more amusing than poor. It points towards Idiocracy: Brawndo's got electrolytes, 'cause that's what plants crave.
I'm not sure it's entirely harmless. You want to see something worth ignoring?