Determination 135: Gold’N Plump v. WCCO-TV
WCCO-TV, the CBS-owned station in the Twin Cities, broadcast a story on December 9, 2002 suggesting that chickens sold by companies such as Gold’n Plump could be dangerous to eat. One reason: bacteria in chickens treated with antibiotics develop resistance to those drugs, sometimes rendering the same drugs ineffective in treating human beings who get sick from eating those chickens.
Complaint: Gold’n Plump, represented by Dan Jacobson, a public relations manager, said that the report was: 1) inaccurate, 2) unbalanced and 3) sensationalized. The company said the news report gave a false impression that it was dangerous to eat chicken sold by such companies as Gold’n Plump.
1) The company said that the WCCO report failed to note that proper cooking destroys bacteria and that antibiotics used in the raising of chickens vanish from their system days before they come to market.
2) The company said the story lacked balance because it was based purely on a press release from the Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy (IATP), which the company described as an advocate of organic foods and a critic of corporate farming and the brand-name food industry. Jacobson said that the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper had, by contrast, balanced the IATP data with information from a half-dozen varied sources.
3) The company said that WCCO-TV’s story deliberately twisted facts in the IATP press release to scare the audience.
Response: WCCO-TV did not attend the hearing, but the station did submit as a response a letter it had written to Gold’n Plump. The letter said the story informed the public about the risk of contracting infections from bacteria in poultry. The station also said it confirmed data it cited from the IATP release with scientists from the University of Minnesota.
(Gold’n Plump noted that the station did not identify those scientists by name.)
Deliberation: Public member Larry Kuusisto, a health care consultant, said that WCCO-TV unfairly set viewers up to fear antibiotics in chickens and then ended the story with comments attributed to Gold’n Plump and another company, Jennie-O, that made them seem defiant.
Public member Chris Gade, a communications manager at the Mayo Clinic, said it bothered him that the station relied on a study that was not reviewed by scientific peers and that the story featured a single source, the IATP researcher.
Some members observed that the story was produced on the same day the IATP news release arrived at the station, yet was presented as the result of an I-Team investigation. The story relied on the news release, one interviewed source and stock footage of chickens and, some members said, did not rise to the level of an investigative report. That kind of packaging of a story, they said, appeared to be intended to give weight to the report that it did not merit.
News Council members needing technical guidance were able to rely on information provided by three scientists invited to the hearing as expert witnesses. They were not allowed to express any opinion on the quality of the journalism. They were: Dr. William Hueston and Dr. David Halvorson of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and Assistant Professor Jacqueline Jacob of the University’s College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences.
Vote: Members upheld the complaints unanimously.
Tags: WCCO-TV