MediaWatch: March 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: March 1994
- Networks Rarely Cover Church News, Ignore Religious Concerns on Social Issues
- NewsBites: Aborting the Mother
- Revolving Door: Tara Helps Tony
- Media Ignore Sexual Harassment Charges -- When Made Against Clinton
- Crying Over Spilt Milk
- Waste Watchdogs
- Reviewers Ignore Gulf War Record
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC's Strait, Compton, Kast, Gregory, and Burns Tout Benefits of Clinton Health Plan
Crying Over Spilt Milk
Fear Over Science
A technophobe tries to inspire public fear over a baseless concern. How do the networks react? They publicize the PR stunt. On February 3 the Pure Food Campaign, a front for Jeremy Rifkin, staged protests over the FDA's decision to allow the sale of milk from cows injected with Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH). "There is a lot of concern around the country tonight about milk," declared Dan Rather. "Some dairy farmers are now giving their cows a growth hormone to produce more milk per cow. But many consumers say they won't drink it." ABC anchor Catherine Crier noted the FDA and AMA "insist it's perfectly safe, but not everyone is convinced."
ABC's Erin Hayes proceeded to explain that "consumer groups protested from coast to coast." Without ever identifying the organizer, on the CBS Evening News Dr. Bob Arnot insisted "consumers around the country were defiantly pouring" milk on the street since "consumers are angry over the government's go-ahead for BGH." Who were these "consumers"? Chicago Sun-Times reporter Neil Steinberg noted: "Protesters organized by the Pure Food Campaign dumped an old-fashioned milk can full of milk as part of a national effort to boycott genetically engineered foods."
Arnot allowed that "seven federal agencies concluded that BGH is safe and that milk produced with it is indistinguishable from milk that is not," but his conclusion left the impression it is something to fear: "Stores that say they won't carry it will have to rely on the supplier's word that their milk is really BGH- free. Consumers won't really know for certain whether the milk that they buy is a product of nature or science." Reading off the same script, Hayes warned: "With no way to actually test for BGH and no labels required for milk made with it, it will soon be anybody's guess as to whether their milk is a product of nature, or a byproduct of science."
In a Feb. 11 Washington Post column Charles Krauthammer revealed the agenda behind the hysteria, explaining that Rifkin is a "leading American Luddite, tireless crusader against bio- technology, `Stephen King of food horror tales'....He is among other things, anti-cow. His epic Beyond Beef is a 353-page polemic about the havoc wreaked by these flatulent, environ-mentally insensitive grass guzzlers." But viewers learned none of this.
