Media Lies About the Food Movement

Jill Richardson's post yesterday, "The Food Movement: Not Just a Bunch of Michael Pollan-Loving Dreamers," gets once again at one of my major beefs with the way the food movement is portrayed in the news.

She highlights the media's brush off of community food security activists, suggesting that we're all ignoring the fact that not everyone can afford the sort of high quality food we believe to be the most healthful. Which is just infuriating.

Indeed, it's been a persistent complaint of mine that you have to pay extra for the food industry to hold the poison. It's the work of food justice advocates that uncovered the many food deserts across our nation, whole neighborhoods, towns and sometimes cities where you can't even buy healthy food, and when you can, it costs a lot more than people pay for it in wealthier communities.

Yes I want all food to be healthy and delicious. I think that should be the default. Though I also know we'll never get to that point by telling people that they should feel bad about largely circumstantial food choices.

Jill highlights some of the ways activists like Mark Winne, have encouraged people to take control of their circumstances through local food policy councils.

Though it isn't just that this is a more empowering message. It's a message that works, and it works because it's true. People can change the system if they recognize its flaws. People can change the system when community organizers show them how to use the considerable power they possess.

But this is not a message that the media ever seems to like to convey. Not in food policy, not regarding any issue.

In the labor arena, entire articles about labor issues are devoted to presenting the side of big business without ever quoting labor advocates. Because union organizing scares the pants off the people who run the media.

During my brief stint as a media and public affairs grad student, I was told that the question of whether media coverage had large or no effect on public opinion had been largely settled in favor of the 'no effect' side. Why? The only effect observed was a reinforcement of the status quo.

Do you see the same problem with that reasoning that I did?