The David Rose Award For GMO Reporting

The fundamentally flawed and distorted climate reporting by David Rose in the UK's Daily Mail is often called out by science journalists and bloggers. His repeated misrepresentation of climate scientists has prompted the UK's Met office to publicly respond on numerous occasions. It's unfortunate that one reporter continues to flout basic journalistic principles on an important scientific issue, but at least he does not go unchallenged. The same cannot be said for John Vidal, the Guardian's environment editor, who is the David Rose of GMO reporting. Vidal's coverage of genetically modified (GM) crops is not as outlandish as Rose's climate coverage, but it is just as slanted. Both have an obvious bias that colors their articles. For example, look at Vidal's 2012 story on the discredited rat tumor study by Gilles-Eric Séralini. Respectable science journalists blanched at the circumstances surrounding the study and examined it critically. Vidal, on the other hand, went out of his way to take it seriously. Last year, Vidal reported on an Indian village where farmers were supposedly producing record crop yields without herbicides and GM technology. One of the soil scientists quoted by Vidal wrote an interesting commentary on the piece, including this bit: