Food scares are created for ratings
May. 27th, 1994 by adminBy H. Russell Cross — May 27, 1994
The Dallas Morning News
(Excerpt — For complete text, please contact The Dallas Morning News)
CBS’ 48 Hours recently aired yet another segment questioning the safety of our nation’s food. The show was a follow-up on a 48 Hours segment on food safety that aired in February. The first show opened with host Dan Rather telling consumers, The truth is bad food could be on any table, and the government estimates that each year 30 million of us are getting sick from what we eat.”
Given the proliferation of network news shows reporting on unsafe food, poor government inspection and supervision, and inadequate safeguards to protect public health, one could assume we have a food epidemic on our hands.
We don’t. What we have is a media blitz for ratings at the expense of consumers and the food industry. Food safety stories grab consumers’ attention. And to increase viewership, the networks have aired numerous food safety scare stories over the past two years.
What is most interesting, however, is that the food safety scare segments have aired during the sweeps” months of February, May, August and November, when the networks measure viewership in order to establish the rates to charge advertisers.
On April 30, 1993 _ at the very beginning of the May sweeps _ ABC’s Prime Time Live reported a scathing story on alleged meat contamination problems. Less than three weeks later, CBS’s Eye on America aired a three-part series on restaurant cleanliness and food safety. In November, Eye on America ran another three-part series on the safety of eating poultry.
In 1994, Prime Time Live aired a segment during the February sweeps on seafood safety, followed a week later by the CBS 48 Hours piece on food safety. The latest 48 Hours segment questioned the safety of milk from cows given a newly approved product called BST, Florida strawberries, and our government approval system that reviews pesticides and other technologies used to produce our food supply.
What’s troubling is the accuracy of the reports. From my 22 years in researching and studying food and food safety, I have total confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply. Can foods be safer? Yes. And the food industry and government are working diligently on new technologies and programs to improve the safety and quality of foods.
But does food hype by television news shows improve the safety of food? ABC news reporter John Stossel recently raised this question during a special entitled Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? He looked at the sensational reporting of risks and danger, and reported that what the media reports often isn’t true and that while there are real risks to worry about, we’re worrying about the wrong ones.
The danger is that if consumers perceive our food is unsafe, then something must be done _ even if science and reviews prove the food is safe. As a result of consumer misperceptions, we see repeated calls for new laws and regulations at both the national and state levels. But what remains unclear and questionable is whether proposed laws and regulations really improve the safety of food. . .
