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February 5, 2002
CNN Party-Line News
In just the past week or so, ABC News, Fox News, and radio's Marketplace have run high-profile stories on the so-called obesity "epidemic," and The Providence Journal called for a stepped-up government war on fat. John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health found venues to threaten lawsuits against restaurants, and Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) publicly linked food to tobacco. People magazine even let the violent extremist-linked animal rights front group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, funded by PETA, spread vegan dogma in its pages.
Now, CNN Headline News has joined the anti-fat crusade. In a Twinkie-tax two-step, CNN HN has promoted the CSPI party line twice this week already. Monday the network blasted portion size, talking about the "super-sizing" of meals "two to five times" as large now as in the past. No restaurant industry viewpoint was presented.
And this morning, Ted Turner's CNN HN ran a piece on "food porn" -- that's "foods so fatty they're nasty." The story consisted entirely of a recitation of CSPI's statistics on the fat and sodium content of various foods -- though CSPI's motives and goals were never questioned. The story even borrowed the term "food porn" from a regular feature in CSPI's Nutrition Action Health newsletter -- which CNN HN urged viewers to read, even giving out CSPI's web address.
What about the other side of the story? When one vendor told CNN HN that the snack platter CSPI slammed was meant to be shared, not eaten by a lone individual, CNN's "objective" reporter mocked the response.
In just the past week or so, ABC News, Fox News, and radio's Marketplace have run high-profile stories on the so-called obesity "epidemic," and The Providence Journal called for a stepped-up government war on fat. John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health found venues to threaten lawsuits against restaurants, and Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) publicly linked food to tobacco. People magazine even let the violent extremist-linked animal rights front group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, funded by PETA, spread vegan dogma in its pages.
Now, CNN Headline News has joined the anti-fat crusade. In a Twinkie-tax two-step, CNN HN has promoted the CSPI party line twice this week already. Monday the network blasted portion size, talking about the "super-sizing" of meals "two to five times" as large now as in the past. No restaurant industry viewpoint was presented.
And this morning, Ted Turner's CNN HN ran a piece on "food porn" -- that's "foods so fatty they're nasty." The story consisted entirely of a recitation of CSPI's statistics on the fat and sodium content of various foods -- though CSPI's motives and goals were never questioned. The story even borrowed the term "food porn" from a regular feature in CSPI's Nutrition Action Health newsletter -- which CNN HN urged viewers to read, even giving out CSPI's web address.
What about the other side of the story? When one vendor told CNN HN that the snack platter CSPI slammed was meant to be shared, not eaten by a lone individual, CNN's "objective" reporter mocked the response.
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