CBS PublicEye Blogger: Alfonsi Wasn't Biased Enough

She practically blamed Mel Gibson* for why diet supplements are not regulated as drugs by the FDA and attempted to scare viewers with the extreme case of a woman's nose falling off, but Sharyn Alfonsi's hit pieces on nutrition supplement makers weren't biased enough for CBS's in-house blogger-cum-media critic Brian Montopoli.:

"The real problem is that any topical product such as the one described in this section of Mr. Hurley's book is not a dietary supplement, and cannot be legally sold as one in the United States. By law such products are drugs. If either Mr. Hurley or his editors had bothered to look at the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, they could have avoided this fundamental mistake," wrote Marc S.Ullman, a New York attorney who represents clients "in the dietary supplement/natural products industry."

"The 'Evening News' gave us two sides of the argument, but it didn't tell us which one was right," complained PublicEye blog Editor Brian Montopoli, formerly of the Columbia Journalism Review.

"When you have someone like [writer Dan] Hurley, who bills himself as a dispassionate observer who simply ‘looked at what evidence I could find’ and reported it, you tend to believe him over representatives of the industry that is being criticized," he explained.

*Gibson was the "star" of a 1993 ad by supplement makers that warned of government intrusion into Americans' lives if a law under consideration in Congress were to pass.