Diabetes and the Media

I watched Craig Doyle’s Saturday Night show on the 21st May, 2010. The only reason I watched the show was because Kim Marsh of Coronation Street fame was a guest and would be talking about diabetes.


How disappointed was I? I watch and enjoyed Denise Welch (the first guest) talk about her life, her biography and her depression. Kim is up next and Craig starts with her Corrie Career, which was to be expected. She gets to mention about 2 sentences on her grandmother’s diabetes and the launch of the website www.itsmyinsulin.ie. I was thrilled that she was talking about diabetes and that it was type 1 diabetes but then she was cut off!

I sat in disbelief!! The media never talks about type 1 diabetes, all they ever focus on is the relationship diabetes has with obesity and not distinguishing type 1 from type 2. I believe that this treatment by media professionals, who haven’t taken the time to research the subject, creates a stigma around diabetes. People don’t talk openly about it and when you do, you can see in their mind that they assume you had to be old, fat and lazy to get it, so you deserve it.

It’s just not fair! Where are our Nick Jonas’s, or Halle Berry’s or Miss America’s 1999 to speak on our behalf? We want people to inspire us to do better, not to downgrade us into hiding our diabetes. Or as in the case of the Craig Doyle show to not even give people a chance to explain what having diabetes means.