Great media bias busters think alike. TimesWatch.org's Clay Waters and I separately wrote articles on The New York Times's Melanie Warner and her latest foray into bashing the American food industry. In the September 13 Times, she takes on salt.
This is the same woman who found nothing to laugh at in funny beer ads and treated toy Hummers in McDonald's Happy Meals as a threat to the environment.
Check out Clay's piece at TimesWatch.org here and my BusinessandMedia.org story here.
Here's a taste of Clay's story:
Business reporter Melanie Warner serves up her usual unappetizing stew of regulatory wishes on the front page of Wednesday's Business section in "The War Over Salt -- It's the Food Industry vs. an Army of Medical Experts."
All of Warners' liberal ingredients are present –- a simplistic theme of uncaring corporations or corporate-influenced organizations trying to foist unhealthy products on ignorant consumers, plus hints of undue corporate influence on scientists, and a concealment the radical nature of the pro-regulatory groups involved.
And of mine:
After leading off her story with an 80-year-old heart disease patient who disobeys his doctor’s orders to limit sodium intake, Warner informed readers that the American Medical Association “is going after the government and the food industry to reduce what it sees as a persistently high level of salt in many processed foods.”
Warner later turned to anti-food industry critic Michael Jacobson to issue his call for more government regulation. “Sodium should be way at the top of the list at the FDA. and it’s not even on it,” Jacobson complained about the regulatory body’s priorities.
But in introducing him to readers, Warner described Jacobson’s Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) as merely a “nutrition advocacy group often critical of the agency and the food industry.” Far from being a mere advocacy group or government watchdog, CSPI has a litigious side to its radical activism.
This year it filed suit against fast food chain KFC over its frying oil and threatened, but so far hasn’t gone through with, suing Cadbury Schweppes for its latest 7-Up advertising campaign. CSPI also dropped plans for a lawsuit against major soft drink makers after former President Bill Clinton brokered a deal between major soft drink makers and the nation’s public school cafeterias.
