When I think if Time magazine, or even Time.com for that matter, I don’t think of agenda-driven hacks or sloppy sensationalists trying to outdo the competition. I think of solid journalists who, for the most part, let their work speak for itself. Time is after all home to the always anticipated Person of the Year franchise and a stable of well respected writers.
That’s why I was so disappointed to see a whole slew of journalistic failures associated with Time.com’s article on the “Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods.” You can read my letter to the magazine’s brain trust here.
The gist of it is that somehow editors who had apparently fallen asleep at the switch printed an erroneous diatribe about “Tuna Terrors” that not only botched the facts but contradicted Time.com’s own reporting in 2008 under the headline “The Danger of Not Eating Tuna.”
This is a quintessential example of the need for the seafood community to stand up for itself when reporting goes awry. This is not a case where we simply disagree with the reporting. It is a case where Time.com is wrong and it needs to correct the record. This is not a case of big, bad industry complaining peevishly about a story that painted it in an unfavorable light. This is a case of Time overtly exaggerating, misreporting and contradicting its own work.
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February 24, 2010
