Update: In Two Monday E. Coli Reports, AP Avoids Describing Involved Farm as ‘Organic’
Yesterday (at NewsBusters ; at BizzyBlog ), I noted a reluctance on the part of Associated Press reporters to describe the farm involved in “the world's deadliest known outbreak of E. coli” as “organic.” The wire service issued two additional lengthy reports this morning, both of which failed to use the “O-word.” The case for the use of the word in these reports is as strong, if not stronger, than it was in the seven items discussed yesterday. Beyond that, AP, along with the rest of the press, has failed to explore the possibility that Germany's 1950s-era outlook towards farming practices may have helped to create the conditions allowing such an outbreak to occur. In a short, unbylined report time-stamped at 9:31 a.m. (“Germany advises against homegrown sprouts”), the wire service mentions the farm once (“Officials on Friday traced the outbreak to sprouts from a farm in northern Germany but are still puzzling over how the bacteria got there”), but did not mention its organic approach. Additionally, AP watered down the outbreak's historic nature, downgrading it to “the country's deadly E. coli outbreak.” In a 9:07 a.m. time-stamped report by writers Geir Moulson and Maria Cheng (“German shortcomings in focus as outbreak wanes”), there was only one reference to the farm involved — “… officials on Friday finally declared sprouts from a farm in northern Germany to be the culprit.” In a 900-word report, the AP pair could surely have squeezed in “organic.” Moulson and Cheng also did the downgrade routine, calling it “Europe's deadly E. coli outbreak.” Maria Cheng's involvement in this particular omission is especially disappointing, as she was the AP writer who yesterday wrote the strongest declarative sentence tagging the farm: “German investigators have declared the outbreak was caused by contaminated sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany.” I can't come up with a good reason why Cheng would have backed away today. Surely a good journalist knows that because you mentioned something important in a different report yesterday, that doesn't relieve you of the obligation to repeat it in subsequent reports. In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal opined that the type of farm involved and the country's resistance to applying modern science to farming should be relevant considerations (italics are in original; bolds are mine): German Greens and their European Union acolytes have long fought scientific advances in food production and protection. After a spice manufacturer in Stuttgart employed the world's first commercial food irradiation in 1957, West Germany banned the practice in 1959 and has since allowed few exceptions. So it's no small scandal that the latest fatal E. coli outbreak has been linked to an organic German farm that shuns modern farming techniques.
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on June 13, 2011. Filed under