Time and time again we see local TV stations recycling the ole’ testing mercury in fish story. We have literally seen the same story in dozens of local markets across the country over the course of five or more years.
There is nothing new to the story. There’s no new angle. And yet the ease of the predetermined narrative and the predetermined outcome with the faux appearance of some sort of benefit to viewers is just too much for some, often overburdened, journalists to pass up.
But a new article published in the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society goes a long way to helping those overburdened journalists get a little bit of perspective on how off base and out of date the thinking behind these reports is.
The report titled “Perceptions of Seafood Safety” (Vol. 41, No. 2 April, 2010) notes that, "There is an intrinsic bias built into the structure of modern media that promotes the ideological agendas of activists over a reasoned, more scientific-based understanding of an issue, and food safety is a primary case in point."
For a long time we’ve been telling reporters to consider their sources and consider the science when doing these types of reports but they don’t always follow our suggestions and often run afoul of the facts.
This new report examines how much of the misinformation associated with these recycled reports feed “urban myths” which sloppy reporting almost never sets straight. “Commonly, previously presented misinformation is propagated in this manner and urban myths surround food safety, such as the overblown health concerns of mercury in fish, an issue that never seems to go away despite recently highly regarded peer reviewed studies showing that reasonable consumption provides substantially greater benefits and risks, particularly for fish as a dietary source of polyunsaturated fatty acids for pregnant women, nutrients necessary for proper fetal neurological development (Cohen 2005)."
Local TV reporters often revel in risk. If they can’t massage an old clichéd catch phrase to tell you “what it means for your wallet” or what the “problem is on your plate” they’d rather not do the story.
There are many factors at work that contribute to this type of sensationalism. One is laziness and the other is the staggering collective migration away from local TV news. There was a time when local TV reporters and anchors where stars, now they’re one-man-bands schlepping gear and running scared that the younger multi-platform journalist willing to work for peanuts is closing in.
For those still interested in actually covering the story and doing it well, “Perceptions of Seafood Safety” (Vol. 41, No. 2 April, 2010) should be a must read.
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April 29, 2010
