Look What's Spawned in Biotech Media Coverage

Journalists today are pretty mindful about the terms they use to describe a group of people, especially when referencing ethnicity or religion. In mainstream media, outright slurs are forbidden (though not everyone abides) and anything that smells pejorative is called out. Euphemisms are another matter, as the tortured debate over torture (I mean "enhanced interrogation") attests. The same goes for loaded terms commonly seen in science and technology stories. Take the use of "frankenfish," for example. Last week, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) moved one step closer to approving genetically engineered salmon, many outlets, from the Daily Mail to the Associated Press, used the moniker in their headlines, and nearly all that reported on the news mentioned "frankenfish" somewhere in their stories. In his discussion of the coverage that followed the FDA's announcement, science journalist Paul Raeburn notes (with disapproval) the ubiquity of the "frankenfish" term. Though ...