USGS

There were a load of fishy stories this year--

A little more than a week ago we told you, in excruciating detail, how badly The Economist had botched its reporting on the USGS report on mercury in non-commercial recreational fish. Well, this week it chose to print our letter as part of its journalistic mea culpa for doing such a hatchet job.

The U.S. Geological Survey is releasing a study today that "Reveals Mercury Contamination in Fish Nationwide." And so it appears to be the case. No argument here. Nope. If that's what their study shows, I have no reason to doubt ‘em.

In the past I have written that environmental activist groups like Oceana, "continue to operate in that gray area between skillfully under informing and blatantly misinforming." It would appear that foodconsumer.org writer Sheilah Downey and editor Heather Kelley have taken a page from Oceana's handbook of operational rhetoric in their article titled "Tuna Getting More Toxic." The pair is ostensibly reporting on a

Yesterday we took public exception with Greenwire about its reporting, or misreporting, on the USGS study about mercury pollution found in ocean water.

Friday's U.S. Geological Survey study on an apparent increase in mercury levels in the North Pacific has quickly become one of, if not the most misreported seafood story of the year. I'm confident it will end up earning this title based simply on the fact that it is not a study about seafood-- in fact it didn't even examine any seafood as part of its work. But journalists from here to Timbuktu are printin misinformed sound bite science from agenda drive sources whose press releases are openly manipulating the study.