Health and beauty

Heavy-handed hunt for Ashya and how papers were manipulated
Nobody wants anything but the best for Ashya King, a five-year-old boy with a brain tumor - but, my goodness, everybody seems to have conspired to bring about the worst. The national newspaper coverage has been a classic example of believing the last person you spoke to.

Robin Williams and suicide reporting
Within minutes of the announcement of the death of Robin Williams people started tweeting "beware how you report this". The tweets continued through the night and all day yesterday, all the time that papers were being prepared. The mental health charity Mind issued two briefings for editors. The Samaritans' guidance on the reporting of suicide could not have been more accessible.
They were just whistling in the wind.

The Sun boobs with Page 3 cancer campaign
More than 50,000 people a year are found to have breast cancer. It is the most common form of the disease in this country and it kills about 12,000 a year. It is also treatable if detected sufficiently early. So any move to promote awareness is to be encouraged? The Sun is banking on everyone answering that question with a 'Yes'.
But is this really about saving lives - or saving page 3?

Anorexia, bulimia and
high-achieving students
After SubScribe commended the Times splash about the prevalence of anorexia among girls in independent schools, an elite university student got in touch to give her views.
Drawing on her own experiences of dealing with academic stress and eating disorders, for a guest column, she said that while the Times's story was welcome, it had fallen into some common linguistic pitfalls.

Colchester hospital scandal:
a catalogue of complacency
It is natural to turn to the local paper when a story about your town hits national headlines. Its big advantages are context and contacts. With Colchester General, a look back over the Daily Gazette's coverage for the past five years, made it easy to see how often things went wrong. It has been put in special measures before, the trust's last chairman was removed because of the hospital's poor performance, and it failed to meet cancer treatment targets repeatedly.

New Year diet advice: eat less,
move around, drink lots of water
Christians celebrate the feast of Epiphany on January 6 to mark the coming of the Magi to see the infant Jesus. Newspapers celebrate the fast of Epiphany to mark the coming of the New You Diet season. This should not be confused with the Spring Clean diet season, the Bikini Diet season in the summer or the autumn Party Dress Diet season. The January detox is the daddy of them all. Odd then, that as a nation we are getting fatter, not slimmer,