Imagine you are watching preparation for a mid-day, on-the-hour ABC Radio news report and these headlines cross the desk on a busy day. Grumpy Editor asks to guess which is selected to lead the brief newscast:
- Yemen air strikes kill 17 al-Qaeda militants.
- Suspicious activity observed at Iranian military site.
- Russian jet crash kills 45 on board.
- Tornado warnings issued in Texas.
- Obama campaign tries to capitalize on marriage issue.
- Washington state health officers declare whooping cough epidemic.
- Double suicide car bombings kill 55 in Damascus.
“But look,” a staffer, holding a coffee mug, mentions, “here’s an Associated Press story, based on a two-year-old survey, about the evils of too much sun.”
“Let’s run with that,” says the boss.
And so in yesterday’s 1 p.m. (Eastern) ABC News, as sunbathers absorb rays on beaches from Wollaston, Mass., to Pismo Beach, Calif., listeners hear:
“Half of U.S. adults under 30 say they have had a sunburn at least once in the previous year --- about the same as a decade ago, according to a government survey released Thursday. In fact, the modest progress reported five years ago has been wiped out.
“Not only that, but women in their 20s are going to tanning salons almost twice a month on average.”
The AP story mentions a 2010 survey of about 5,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 29, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finds the share of those who said they had a sunburn in the preceding year dropped from about 51 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2005, then went back up to 50 percent in 2010.
More news in a moment…
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