BBC3 's Dying For Clear Skin - an exercise in scaremongering and crap journalism
Emotive and manipulative film-making masquerades as factual documentary Last night I decided to watch BBC3 for a change instead of Panorama. It was about tax havens. Too heavy for a Monday, I thought, so scrolled through and caught the end of Junior Doctors. Apparently BBC3 is running a season of Body Beautiful programmes, targeted for its 13-25 demographic, in light of the pressure on young people to look perfect. The show on this evening was “ Dying for Clear Skin ”; having suffered from horrendous acne as a teen and early twenties (with the occasional monthly breakout now), I suspected that it would be touching upon the drug Roaccutane, which I had been treated with twice - at 17 and 20. Boy, did I underestimate that. What followed was an hour-long, scaremongering propaganda film about the dangers of Roaccutane, interwoven with highly emotive stories about young people who had apparently taken their own lives during or follow...