Upton Sinclair wrote in The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism (1928): "I knew for instance, sitting at my desk, just how many extra papers I could sell with a scare-line on a police scandal.
[4] Women's magazines, especially from the early 1990s onward, have published an increasing number of "scare stories"[8] about health, most often using alarming headlines and "billboard" text that are not quotations.
For example, Glamour magazine in the year 1990 had no health cover stories, but in 2002 had at least one scare-line in almost every issue, e.g. "It's Common, It Can Kill: Why Aren't Doctors Telling Us about This Women-only Disease?"
[8]: 124 Myrna Blyth, a feminist, media critic, and former editor-in-chief of Ladies' Home Journal, characterizes the trend as the selling of unhappiness and fear about health.
Often, a hint of conspiracy was added ("10 Urgent Health Risks Doctors Don't Tell You About") to ratchet up the fear factor....She concludes that women acting as the effective gatekeepers of family health is why they have been increasingly targeted by this sort of writing and marketing,[8]: 125 often based on "confusing, junk-science statistics"[8]: 122 and the replacement of rigorous reporting with personal opinion and vague, exaggeratory implications with a lot of "wiggle room".