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Monday, June 16, 2008
Tomatoes and the MSM frenzy
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 4:38 PM
Hate to make today a Bob Norman pimpathon, but this piece he wrote about how the media handled the tomato-salmonella scare is just too good not to share:
First you must understand that the tomato story was perfect for newspapers. Think about it — nothing like deadly tomatoes on a dull news day. Tomatoes are everywhere! In our homes, restaurants, spaghetti sauce, salads … everywhere. The odds that any Sentinel readers would be affected by the salmonella scare was about the same as one of them getting stuck in a pool drain or killed by a candle (both old Help Team bugaboos). Since April, one person has died nationally with 167 reported ill. And Florida tomatoes weren’t affected at all.
But don’t let the facts get in the way of a sensational lede story. On Tuesday, the Sun-Sentinel put the story on the front page with a large bold headline headline: “HOLD THE TOMATOES.”
The article wasn’t about how Browardites were coming down ill. There were, of course, no illnesses here since the tomatoes were fine. The local hook was that some restaurants had pulled tomotoes from their menus even though they were believed to be safe (the entire headline, including the smaller print: “Many Fast-Food Restaurants Say: HOLD THE TOMATOES”).
The article itself was basically a primer on different types of tomatoes and the finer points of the salmonella you weren’t going to get in Florida.
Fine. Okay. The Sentinel, however, wasn’t finished with this juicy story. They put the Help Team on the job and the next day came out with this lead front-page headline: “Florida’s tomatoes declared OK to eat.”
Forget that Florida’s tomatoes were never declared not OK to eat in the first place. Just pass the pizza pie. The article rehashed the previous day’s information and, admirably, contained a bit of self-referential criticism on the absurdity of the piece appearing in the newspaper at all….
So, how did the Tampa Bay dailies do?
The Tampa Tribune went much the same route as the rest of the dailies, playing up the voluntary ban by some large corporations before declaring tomatoes safe the next day. June 9’s blog “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” (never mind that salmonella isn’t exactly a brutally deadly thing, although one death was linked to the tainted tomatoes) and June 10’s “Tainted Tomato Varieties Pulled From Supermarkets” vs. June 11’s “FDA Clears Bay Area Tomatoes; Harvesting Stopped in South Florida” and “Florida Tomatoes Rejected Over Scare.”
At the Times, the paper led with a pretty balanced and non-tabloidy FAQ on the story that pointed out the voluntary nature of the ban and that no Florida cases had been reported. The story was very low-key and non-inflammatory. (It appears from the Times’ website that an earlier headline online about tomato-borne salmonella sickening dozens “nationwide” was replaced with a more precise headline that didn’t lead you to believe that every state was affected.) The paper even did a good story two days later on what the scare cost Florida growers: $500 million.
(photo by Manjith Kainickara)
(Crossposted from The Political Whore.)
Comments (27)
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I love tomatoes. I just had a slice of one on a great burger about 10 minutes ago. As far as the media coverage being sensationalized and scare-tactic-y, would you expect any less? Not from a the-way-it-should-be aspect, but from a the-way-it-too-often-happens-these-days aspect. People pay attention to things that as presented a scary and need-to-know information. If the media presented it as benign information only, many people would question why it was even brought up...
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With health safety and security such a vital part of our daily lives and the lives of our children we need to focus on the precautions that save lives and the lives, health and welfare of our families, we need to vote McCain into office because of the safety standards he readily represents, we need to teach and ENSURE proper sanitation and washing procedures to our industries from the entry-level workers on up and we need to preserve safe and secure food distribution and storage for all of the points on our food supply networks. Without these proper and vital elements of our daily food production and distribution industry we are opening ourselves up for increasing occurences of this terrifying indignity and magnitude.
There's no way around that. Security and precautions for our food, the lifes blood of our children and our families is the ultimate goal for everyone. The vote for McCain is the only vote that ensures this is in Americas forefront. An American President to The White House in 08!! We all need to relax and use the common sense and dignity we all have inside.
Yes, McCain is the candidate known for food safety. And everyone knows that Obama hates healthy children and healthy food.
will be happy to be proved wrong with this one.... but having done survival training during my Army days, I have to admit to a raised eyebrow with this as well.
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