Maddening Media Misinformation on Biotech and Industrial Agriculture
ACSH
By Thomas R. DeGregori
August 13, 2007
Here’s Part 1 of a 5-part article series by Tom DeGregori focusing on the affects media misinformation has on both biotech agriculture and industrial agriculture.
Media bias is a charge that one often hears when a group gets less than favorable coverage. There are arguments about whether there is media bias and whom it favors and who is harmed by it. Media defenders argue that there are undoubtedly biased news sources but that overall there is no consistent media bias. Bias here would be defined as allowing one’s personal worldview — be it liberal, conservative, radical, or reactionary — to select, frame, and color the news. The defenders of the media argue that the very principles of modern journalism are such that, if followed, they reduce the possibility of conscious or unconscious bias.
The purpose of this article is to argue, though, that apart from any bias of media moguls or journalists, there is a bias built into the very structure of the modern media and the rules that govern it. On issue after issue, the structure of modern media favors the viewpoint of activists with an ideological agenda over those who seek a reasoned, more scientific understanding of an issue.
In many respects, those with the most knowledge on a subject, namely scientists and others professionally studying the issue, may be the last to be heard on a controversial issue, if they are heard at all. The structural biases built into the mainstream media have been amplified by the Internet, where ideological advocates, often with a multiplicity of different organizations with interlinking webpages are able to dominate the Web on key issues. I am not the only writer who has documented using a search engine on a particular subject, such as a genetically engineered bacterium, and having to wade through a list of nonsensical ideological postings before encountering an entry that is factually based. As I have noted, a journalist on deadline, seeking information on a topic, would have difficulty finding information that was even remotely accurate.
Anti-Tech and Anti-Correction
I will be examining two categories of structural media bias in this series of five daily blog entries. The first is a general anti-science, anti-technology bias in our culture that has been carefully nurtured by activists and has carried over into the media. The second is the op-ed policies of most major newspapers that do not allow one opinion piece directly to contradict a previous one, though the contradictory opinion may be offered de novo. Let me jump ahead a bit to my conclusion on this point since it is worth repeating.
When a story breaks, be it on avian influenza or E. coli 0157:H7 in spinach, the activist true believers know the answers to all the questions before they are asked. They are then quick to flood the media with op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, Internet articles, etc. explaining that avian influenza was caused by “industrial chicken production” or that the E. coli 0157:H7 in spinach was the result of “industrial agriculture” with the source of the E. coli 0157:H7 being industrially produced cattle in what are called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. However inane and even idiotic the original article may be, how does one write an op-ed piece countering the ideological offering without mentioning it and with nothing more exciting to say except that we don’t know the real cause as we do not yet have any evidence?
Months later, when the investigation has proceeded and the ideological offering has been massively refuted by the evidence, the story is no longer news and an op-ed piece on the subject is unlikely to be considered. And since the original op-ed was an opinion piece, no correction or refutation is necessary. The ideological opinion pieces may end up being the only definitive statement in many people’s minds as to the cause of the problem, which means that the issue passes into history with the vast majority of the reading public being basically misinformed. Yet the newspaper does not feel that it was vehicle for misinforming its reading public.
The Trend Toward Science-Bashing
Over the last half century, there has been a growing chorus of largely unanswered criticism of modern life. In recent decades, it has reached deafening proportions. In the process, not only has public opinion been shaped but the very language that is used in daily discourse on key issues has been framed by the critics. “Chemicals” has become a code word for industrially-produced chemicals, and they are assumed to be dangerous if not carcinogenic, while naturally-produced chemicals are assumed to be benign. Try telling a court that a substance was all-natural and therefore safe after you have been caught administering a lethal dose of strychnine. After all, until recent times, virtually all poisons of choice were extracts from plants.
Except to chemists and a few others, “organic” no longer refers to a carbon-based compound but to a virtuous, safe, environmentally-sound, healthy, humane way of producing delicious, safe, nutritious food — while the historically unprecedented cornucopia of food produced by modern agriculture and distributed by modern transportation has been demonized in more ways than one can even begin to enumerate, with “industrial” being one of the latest catchall phrases of condemnation and blame. “Chemical-dependent” industrial agriculture is the polar opposite of all the good things that constitute “organic” agriculture and can be blamed for many of the ills of the world.
One good example of the activists’ control of the language as a means of controlling permissible thought is the talk about transgenic (genetically-modified, using recombinant DNA) agriculture and the food that it produces. The plants are alleged to have “terminator genes” (which they do not), normal pollen drift is defined as “pollution” and “contamination,” and the term commonly used for food from transgenic plants is “frankenfood.”
Though terminology may often be toned down, these cultural biases blend into newspapers’ language on food, gardening, or sections with titles like “Living.” Very few if any of the writers for these sections have a science background, but they likely took at least one college course if not more where anti-modernist rhetoric was in full force. The writers of these sections can use what they learned in college English courses to the fullest extent as they speak about “organic” produce “bursting with flavor” and the rich, fine textures of the foods produced in an environmentally-friendly way.
Trying to Correct the Record
On one occasion, my otherwise very good local newspaper sent one of its drama critics to write a piece on organic agriculture that was riddled with factual errors. I sent him an e-mail pointing out the many errors, which after a further exchange of e-mails he admitted were factually wrong — but he added that he doubted that the newspaper would “revisit” the story. Absent a better explanation, I can only conclude that editorial oversight and a concern for factual accuracy only applies to the hard news sections. However, if there were articles critical of “organic” agriculture or in praise of conventional agriculture, there would be such a blizzard of letters to the paper that notice would probably be taken and the issue would indeed be revisited.
One particularly egregious example of this double standard was a story in the Houston Chronicle done on the supposed introgression of genes from transgenic maize into the local varieties of maize. This was made into a cause celebre by the anti-GM NGOs, since transgenes were allegedly “contaminating” Mexican landraces where maize was first domesticated. The rhetoric was full-blown, and this was condemned as genetic pollution (where and when have we heard that term before?) and contamination of a crop that was a sacred part of the cultural life of the people. This story appeared in the Sunday newspaper and began in the upper left hand corner of the front page of the first section and continued inside for over a full page. Needless to say, those of us in the Houston area (including College Station, where Texas A&M is located) who knew anything about transgenic maize were appalled by the inaccuracies in the story.
If the author had called me either before or after her trip to Mexico, I could have directed her to an article in Science the year before written by two distinguished Mexican scientists accepting the inevitability of the introgression of genes from transgenic maize and arguing that the outcome was likely to be beneficial. Landraces of maize, like those of any domesticated plant, change through time and are generally the better for it. Maize being “sacred” does not mean that it has to be static and unchanging. Maize is, after all, a staple food for the region, so changes that facilitate an increase in a harvestable crop either by increasing output or by reducing pre- and/or post-harvest losses (provided that there are no taste, texture, or nutrition losses) has to be considered in some way beneficial. I am less concerned that she did not contact me than that she did not try to contact anyone at Texas A&M, which is world-renowned for its maize research.
Embedded with Anti-GMO Forces
The author of the article went to Mexico in the company of an anti-GM NGO. The newspaper’s ombudsman found nothing wrong with that, and nothing about it was publicized. Can one imagine the opposite: if she had gone down there with scientists from a biotech firm like Monsanto? This would have been a scandal and would have become the dominant issue of any later story, rendering anything in her piece even mildly favorable to transgenic maize invalid (or if critical, not critical enough). The “scandal” of her going to Mexico with corporate scientists, had it happened, would still be bouncing around the Internet, while her going with the activists did not even merit a brief mention.
Our intrepid author went to central Mexico, which is home to CIMMYT (Spanish acronym for International Center for Research in Maize and Wheat) where Dr. Norman Borlaug worked part of the year, with the other part at Texas A&M. Not only did she not attempt to make contact, she apparently had never heard of either. As I have commented elsewhere, this would be like someone going to Rome to write an article on the Roman Catholic Church and never having heard of the Vatican or the Pope.
I gathered a group of scientists from Texas A&M and sent a letter to the ombudsman, who chose to defend her with the argument that “both sides” were unhappy with her argument, though I had difficulty figuring out what could possibly have made the NGOs unhappy with it. Nothing critical about the article ever appeared, leaving the readers of the Chronicle seriously misinformed about the issue. The ombudsman left us with the statement that this was an issue that would have to be revisited, though in the several years since it has not been — even though a major study and peer-reviewed article has since shown that there is not evidence of any introgression yet. And if there was, the question would then be: what evidence is there of any harm?
Traveling to a meeting on a controversial issue with partisan group took journalistic contact to an unprofessional level, and it is likely NGOs generally have far greater contact with the media than do the molecular biologists and biotechnologists working and researching these issues. Many food editors and writers have the contact information for local food activists. Indeed, the activists have little to do other than maintain contact with the media, write op-eds, or develop story ideas. Scientists, if they are to excel in what they are doing, have to do science everyday and not contact the media unless called upon.
(More to come on these topics tomorrow. Go here for Part 2.)
Thomas R. DeGregori is a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and a member of the Founders Circle of the American Council on Science and Health. His homepage is: http://www.uh.edu/~trdegreg
Source: ACSH.
