CBS Promotes Taxing ‘Fattening, Non-Nutritious’ Food
CBS's Michelle Miller leaned towards supporters of taxing junk food on Tuesday's Early Show, playing three sound bites from them and none from opponents. Miller only made one vague reference to the opposing side, and she immediately followed it by playing up the supposedly positive result of the tax: ” While some say a new tax is the last thing we need, it could mean a healthier America .” The correspondent led her report by hyping how “we're paying quite a hefty toll” for creating “cheap fast food,” and launched into her first sound bite, which came from Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the perennial “food police” organization, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. After a second clip from Jacobson, Miller lamented how ” poorer consumers are often priced out of healthier options, because fresher, purer foods cost more . With the percentage of obese adults doubling in the past 30 years, and the percentage of obese children tripling, the annual health care cost of obesity has soared to over $100 billion.” The CBS News journalist then turned to her second “industry expert,” Mark Bittman of the New York Times, whom she labeled as merely an “author and food columnist,” without mentioning the media outlet that he writes for. Only two days earlier, as Clay Waters of MRC's TimesWatch noted , Bittman pushed for taxes on ” things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks ” in a Sunday article in the Times.
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on July 26, 2011. Filed under