'Churnalism' gives food a bad name

Ever heard of the Biscuit Injury Threat Evaluation? Me neither probably because (I suspect) it does not really exist. But that didn't stop some newspapers giving the concept plenty of coverage when one publicity-hungry company put out a release claiming it had found a way to rank popular biscuits by their propensity to cause injury. And it's 'BITE' system found that custard creams were the most dangerous biscuits around. Apparently.

It's all stuff and nonsense, of course. And it could be dismissed as a piece of harmless fun. Except that I think this daft story exemplifies all that is wrong about the reporting of food in the media.

These days any half-baked survey or dodgy piece of research is almost guaranteed to get coverage so long as it is fun or controversial or a mixture of both. Never mind if the study is actually true; never mind if it is clearly biased; never mind if it fails to provide any genuine insights to help people make sense of the world in which they live.

At one extreme, this results in funny stories about the dangers of eating custard creams. At the other extreme, we have regular mis-reporting of science and dangerously mixed messages about food, diet and health. In turn, that is creating plenty of confusion among consumers.

Based on my 20 years in the communications industry, I have no doubts that things are getting worse. Who to blame? Well, the new culture of 'churnalism' in the mainstream media where dwindling numbers of hard-pressed journalists struggle to fill acres of space, with little time to check basic facts does not help any of us. But those who pump out these endless surveys in the hope of free publicity and those who aggressively promote the results of poor scientific studies for their own purposes are equally culpable for the dumbing down of the nation when it comes to our understanding of food and food issues.