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March 26, 2006
TomDispatch - Tomgram: Following the Food Chain with Michael Pollan
Follow up on Michael Pollan's hunting experience excerpt with an interview conducted about a year ago, including this astute observation:
TomDispatch - Tomgram: Following the Food Chain with Michael Pollan: Look at an issue I know something about, genetic engineering. Why was its introduction into our food supply not a contested fight in America?Over labeling that would say that the food was genetically engineered?
About labeling, but also, before that, about whether we should even approve this technology. The reason there was not a fight is because both political parties were on board for it. The Republicans were predictably pro-business and anti-regulation. And the Democrats had allied themselves with the biotechnology industry, had picked it as one of the growth industries in the early 1990s. Also, the biotech industry, in the person of Robert Shapiro, the president of Monsanto, was very close to Clinton and his administration.
The key moment, when the rules and regulations were being decided for the industry, came at the end of the first Bush administration and the beginning of the first Clinton administration. Both parties agreed that the industry should proceed with as little regulation as possible. The result was that biotech was introduced with no political debate and remarkably little journalistic attention.
The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole of American politics. Genetically modified crops were in the black hole until the Europeans reacted so strongly against them; then we began to have a little bit of politics around the issue, but still not very much. The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed antagonisms.
I think some liberals have forgotten what a schmuck Clinton actually was - very much a Rockefeller Democrat.
Read more of Michael Pollan's interview here
Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, GMO, media
One other tidbit:
Consider the fact that some of the best journalism in the last year has come from comedians. I'm thinking of Jon Stewart, who has done some excellent journalism on the Daily Show. He looks at what powerful people say and then juxtaposes it to their previous statements. When Dick Cheney says something like, “I never claimed that Hussein was directly behind 9/11,” the mainstream press lets that stand.Jon Stewart finds the videotape that contradicts the statement and juxtaposes it with the denial, exposing Cheney as having lied. That's powerful and objective journalism. I've asked network TV producers, “Why don't you do that sort of thing?” and they say: “We can't. It's considered too political.” But why is it regarded as political to simply put one fact next to another fact?
Typed up by by swanksalot at March 26, 2006 02:26 PM