media maddness
...lergic to mayonnaise, or maybe it was bad mayonnaise. The media can make a story into madness; People have confidence in the media’s credibility on food safety issues. Three-fourths of consumers believe the majority of media coverage about food safety. According to a recent study conducted by Dr. Dennis G. Olson, a professor of Animal Science, Food Science and Human Nutrition at Iowa State University only 9 percent believe very little of what is printed. 86 percent of Americans feel that e-coli and salmonella are the biggest problems in food safety today. So what happens when the public reacts negatively to media stories? The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) research has uncovered a strong correlation between negative economic news on television and drops in Consumer Confidence as measured by the Conference Board. This correlation seems particularly pronounced when levels of coverage exceed more than 2 stories per night on each newscast. So in other words if one town in Texas has a report of bad beef or poultry, then people are going to be cautious before buying any kind of beef or poultry from Texas. This causes a change in the Texas market, creating a problem for Texan farmers and ranchers. I’m sure most of you heard about the lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey? The suit charges that the show on mad cow disease, aired on April 15, 1996, deliberately misled viewers into thinking that U.S. beef was unsafe, which triggered a price drop. Cattleman believe Winfrey’s comments took a $10 million bite out of beef prices. This is just another case of negative media effecting the public’s view on agriculture Pat Tiggles of Coulee City, Washington is taking a stand against negative media “Because the urban public doesn’t care that we (in agriculture) are getting burned at the stake” (Tiggles, 6) In Tiggels opinion farmers and ranchers are apologizing to the public for producing food. Tiggles believes that agriculture education in the classroom has helped “tell agriculture’s side of the story.” (Tiggles, 6) Still there are they many other uninformed people that still believe that agriculture in cows, sows and plows and even sometimes the par...