To be sure, political leanings color perception, and one expects that anybody who writes a lot for the American Enterprise Institute will tend to side with industry over its critics from the realms of regulatory agencies or from the gadfly press. They just instinctively bristle if they see anybody messing with free enterprise. (We liberals, who typically defend and admire the private sector but want it well-policed, are apt to regard such bristling as excessive toadyism to corporate capitalism.) But at the Huffington Post‘s HuffPost Media page one columnist, Jon Entine, has nonetheless laid out a good argument that traditional lines of free speech protection have been crossed in a news room.
Under the magnifying glass is the oft-heralded Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a pub that this site has saluted often for its broad range of aggressive reporting on medical and environmental matters. Among its campaigns in recent years has been to reveal worries by some, perhaps many if not a majority of specialists, about bisphenol A and pthalates. They are ingredients in plastics goods that not only mimic estrogen to some degree, and may (say some) pose significant development hazard to infants and children as well as to many wildlife species.
It’s a contentious issue. So far the FDA has not deemed the evidence strong enough for vigorous regulatory action, although it is sympathetic to precautionary moves by consumers. The paper’s reporters have chronicled many angles, but the tenor of their pieces has leaned toward stronger FDA action and that in the meantime buyers should avoid certain products for certain uses – such as baby bottles or some containers for children’s food.
Read Entine’s piece above for the details. The gist is that a generally right-wing JS columnist, Pat McIheran, a little over a week ago indirectly but unmistakably raised a pronounced cocked eyebrow at his own paper’s news coverage of BPA. He did so by citing a recent German study largely exonerating BPA, and citing as his primary source Entine himself via an earlier column for the AEI’s magazine site, The American. A storm of to-and-fro on line comments to the column ensued, rather civil in this day and age. Some argue that the German study was done by shills for industry, others that it fairly well represents the true consensus among experts. Columnist McIlheran and his source, Entine, chimed in regularly in the digital conversation (at the bottom of the JS column linked at this graf’s start).
So far, so normal. A little less normal is that the newspaper’s managing editor, George Stanley, briefly joined the parade of commenters. His one sentence remark declared that the German study is tainted because “all the scientist-authors of the study have financial ties to the plastics industry.” Implication: they are conflicted, probably partisan, and their conclusion is suspect. Ergo, my paper’s columnist erred in trusting the study.
Anybody from outside says that, no big deal. But this is the managing editor, boss of the news team. Back in 2008, m.e. Stanley wrote a column extolling the independence of his news staff and its ability to write freely, and also declaring that personal politics and opinion are not part of his publication’s news making process. This raises the question – if the reporters are trusted not to let politics color their coverage, is it not a corollary that people PAID to share opinions, such as McIlheran, not have reason to worry about public ripostes – to reasonably justified opinions – from senior members of the news team?
It’s in interesting issue. A point of reference may be the tempest that busted out two years ago or so at the Washington Post. Its conservative columnist George Will listed a bunch of reasons he believes anthropogenic global warming is hogwash. The Post came under fire from many quarters for NOT upbraiding him and for NOT insisting Will provide better foundation for his assertion. Actually, and here’s my opinion: I’d agree that Will cited only hogwash. He deserved some in-house blowback and stronger control. But the criticism aimed at the Post was that the Op-Ed section’s managers – not the news side’s biggest suit – should have jumped on their superstar columnist for providing such weak sourcing. The J-S situation is different. McIheran was hired to write opinions based on reasonable grounds. The German study seems to provide them, even if it turns out to be wrong. The ME should have pushed “delete” before adding his thoughts to the public comment string. That he didn’t is no felony. He didn’t get him fired or any such thing as that. But it is a misdemeanor violation of journalism’s non-codified book of ethics, I’d say.
– Charlie Petit
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