Outrage: Two Minutes on NBC Nightly News For Fit Mouse

With help from Romenesko, we now know that Gary Schwitzer at the University of Minnesota health news blog is shocked—shocked!—that NBC gave up so much time to the mouse-pill story. (A recap: A lazy mouse took two pills and showed increased endurance and fitness without doing any exercise.)

"It devoted more than 2 minutes out of its total of 22 minutes or so of news time to this story. We are at war. The economy is in the tank. No one can afford gas in the tank. But 2 minutes was given to this mouse research...With limited airtime, why was that an important nugget? Unless one's goal is to make drug company sponsors happy."

While Mr. Schwitzer accuses NBC of trying to make it sponsors happy, maybe it was best to hold off his post before he noticed that, well, everyone thought this was big news. The Times put it on its front page, The Journal gave it 875 words, the L.A. Times gave it 1,047.

But "more than two minutes" on the NBC Nightly News? Eek!