|
 |
March 2000 |
|
Biotech Issues Viewed Differently by U.S. and European Journalists |
|
|
Biotech Issues - U.S. & European Views Jim Jarman
|
Resistance of the European Union to food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is based partly on their media's tendency to report science as something bad, according to a British journalism educator. Journalists use a simple inferential framework to respond to a situation and in this case the European framework is that science is bad, said Brian Winston, head of the School of Communication, Design and Media at the University of Westminster, Middlesex, England. Winston's remarks followed a presentation by Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, MU agricultural economist, whose study showed that European media during the 1990s have cast GMOs more negatively than have U.S. media. He studied the use of positive and negative words in the context of articles appearing in major newspapers in the United States and Britain. Positive media coverage of biotechnology in the United Kingdom has been very scant, he said, while U.S. coverage, although sometimes negative, has been more balanced. "Depending on what media you are looking at, you can get a very different perspective on biotechnology," he said. In Britain, biotechnology is to do with medicine and not agriculture, Winston said. "It's always white-hat black-hat stuff," he told journalists attending a Global Information Wars conference at the University of Missouri-Columbia. "You guys talk of GMOs, we talk about GM Food," he said. "You're talking about organisms and we are talking about Frankenfoods. You're talking about firms like Monsanto and we are talking about American imperialism." "You talk about risk assessment," he said. "We're talking about messing with the food supply and denying the right for us to know what we are eating. "The bottom line of all this is that this is a scientific story and science is not journalism's longest suit, especially when it comes to risk assessment. And what we are talking about is a failure to report risk assessment." The conference on the MU campus highlighted EU and U.S. conflicts among journalists, lawyers and entrepreneurs. Source: Brian Winston: 0171 911 5944; Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes 573-882-0143 I just wanted to use this article as a way to provide some little bit of additional information. This information is that many European cheeses, wines and beers are made from GMO or more specifically transgenic enzymes and yeasts. These transgenic enzymes and yeasts come from the pharmaceutical side instead of agricultural divisions of European companies. I guess that makes it easier to sidestep the issue. That should give some interesting twists to the political side of this US vs. European GMO controversy when GMO labeling begins to appear on those cheeses and bottles.
|
