Public health campaigns are being impeded by middle class journalists who ignore diseases that affect the less well off, the health secretary Alan Milburn claimed yesterday.

In a provocative appearance before a cross-party committee of MPs, Mr Milburn complained that newspapers regularly failed to report initiatives tackling coronary heart disease, which disproportionately affected working class men. By contrast, papers gave widespread coverage on cancer.

Asked by David Hinchliffe, the Labour chairman of the Commons health select committee, how he could make public health campaigns more "sexy", Mr Milburn turned his fire on Britain's fourth estate.

"Every time we do a story about cancer and what we are trying to do, it always gets into the newspapers. Every time we do a story about coronary heart disease, it never gets into the newspapers," he said. He hinted that the solution lay not with MPs but with journalists.

He added that part of the reason for the disparity in coverage was the social impact of coronary heart disease. Unskilled men ran three times the risk of this disease. "But just because it adversely affects disproportionately one part of the population that should not mean it's not a concern to the whole population."

In the face of the media's apparent indifference to heart disease, Mr Milburn said he would step up advertising to warn about its dangers.

Mr Milburn's remarks reflect frustration in the health department that cancer is getting more attention than heart disease, even though ministers have appointed "tsars" to tackle each disease.

But health correspondents will point out that cancer receives more attention because there appears to be no ready cure, unlike heart disease where the known significant cause is a fatty diet.

John Austin, the Labour MP for Erith and Thamesmead, meanwhile underlined anxiety on the Labour benches with a warning that funding for public health could "slip down the priority list".