I'm sure by now that plenty of you are familiar with The Devil Wears Prada, a bestselling novel that was turned into an equally successful film starring Meryl Streep as a world famous and incredibly demanding fashion editor and Anne Hathaway as her harried personal assistant. It's fairly well known that the character played by Streep is based on Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. Normally this blog would be about as far away from Vogue and its concerns as possible, but this month the magazine contains an extensive feature on fish consumption. Now, normally we approach the sort of journalism done by a fashion or lifestyle magazine with more than a bit of trepidation, as in the past they've committed some pretty egregious errors when it comes to the health benefits of fish. But even before reading the Vogue article the question was asked, "Really, how bad could it be?"
This time, the answer was worse than you could imagine. The article that appeared, written by Hollywood mom and sometime screenwriter Bronwyn Garrity -- near as we can tell the one screenplay she's sold has yet to be produced -- may very well be the most alarmist, willfully unbalanced piece of "journalism" we've seen. In short, it would appear that while Ms. Wintour might be demanding when it comes to the performance of her personal assistants, she seems far less exacting when it comes to the journalism standards she demands of her magazine. The fact is Garrity’s article would actually be a pretty funny romp through unbridled scientifically contradicted paranoia if it weren’t such a miscarriage of journalistic justice. From the title on the article is filled with Fourth Estate malpractice. The headlines shouts “mercury rising” in bold print. Nowhere is there evidence that mercury levels in commercial seafood are rising, she offers no scientific peer reviewed examples to back this up but instead cites agenda-driven quasi science from environmental lobbyists—hardly a high bar for sourcing.
Perhaps Garrity is unaware that the The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states reporters should "Make certain that headlines... do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context." Garrity’s admitted “amped-up anxiety” leads, for some reason, her to write an article about food and nutrition that completely ignores a brand new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) draft report on the very topics she is writing about. And not just any draft report, the most in-depth, published, peer-reviewed assessment of science on the topic to date. Perhaps when crafting the Bill of Rights its authors would have chosen to ignore the Magna Carta? Garrity’s ignorance of the FDA’s report or her choice to ignore it is staggeringly irresponsible. Aside from her own apparent lack of research, perhaps her myriad sources neglected to mention its existence to her—any of the growing body of evidence that concludes that the real dietary risk from seafood is not eating enough of it would fly in the face of the presupposed conclusions they appear to have fed her.
So, rather than gather facts from research reviewed by doctors at institutions like the University of Washington, Harvard School of Public Health and Children's Hospital and Research Center at Oakland she uses a 2008 Oceana/Mercury Policy Project report that saw “volunteers” collect things like tuna samples from grocery stores and sushi restaurants for mercury testing. She then notes how some of the fish exceeded the FDA average for mercury content. But what she doesn’t tell you is that the average of the tuna samples both fresh and sushi in that very study were below the FDA’s action level. She doesn’t mention this but does note that the study’s findings were “horrifying” and that that contradictory studies (perhaps ones that are peer reviewed) that actually recommend fish consumption tipped her into “paralysis.” As mentioned at the top, a journalistically substandard article but humorous nonetheless.
Garrity’s smorgasbord of marginal sourcing continues throughout. She writes that it’s easy to find people with elevated blood levels of mercury-- and how does she find this tantalizing nugget? She discovers it when she goes “out with friends.” But these elevated levels her friends have told her about—do they equate to any symptoms, any ill affects any detriment to the patient? Perhaps instead she should have consulted Dr. Gary Myers and read his report published in the Journal of Nutrition titled Nutrient and Methyl Mercury Exposure from Consuming Fish—a 20 year study.
Or, I guess she could just rely on stuff her friends told her-- yea let’s do that.
Then there’s her use of Kathryn Mahaffey, Ph.D.— apparently an impressive source given that she was “formerly the EPA’s leading mercury scientist.” Ah yes, but once again what Garrity doesn’t tell her readers exposes the real agenda of her sources. Mahaffey isn’t just a former EPA official she is currently an environmental activist for Oceana—what? That’s right, in fact Mahaffey authored Oceana’s comments on the FDA’s draft report mentioned before, something perhaps she forgot to tell Garrity about.
Further along she cites another doctor who is described as one who is “pushing for greater awareness of mercury in seafood,” Jane Hightower. Another noted environmental campaigner who insists she is an independent voice with no activist agenda. However, in the preface of her own book she thanks the Mercury Policy Project, an organization developed by The Tides Center, which describes itself as a "nonprofit fiscal sponsor to forward-thinking activists and organizations." What's more, Hightower’s been featured on Natural Resources Defense Council the website , "the nation's most effective environmental action group." She talks about the need to get the word out about mercury and how, "of course, we need NRDC and others to work with people in the field, and to take it to the masses." No activist agenda?
Garrity knows enough to make sure to write about the benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids, but then leavened the rest of her article with disinformation directly culled from environmental activist talking points. Everywhere you look there are references from groups like Oceana, NRDC and Monterey Bay Aquarium, but nary a peep from health organizations like the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, both of which have endorsed the proven health benefits of eating fish. While Garrity might think it's fine to get your scientific or nutritional information from a lawyer with an environmental activist group or from “friends,” it’s perhaps safer to consult actual nutritional sources like the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, which included in a 2008 article the following conclusion:
Epidemiologic studies indicate that regular consumption of an average of two servings of fatty fish per week (about 3.5 oz per serving) high in long-chain n-3 fatty acids, such as EPAi and DHAj is associated with a 30%-40% 2 risk of death from cardiac events in subjects without prior disease.
To put that into real-world terms, the benefit of adding fish to your diet is roughly equal to taking a prescription anti-cholesterol medication.
Shoddy sourcing with clear agendas and a comically hyper fear of fish combine to produce a tragically flawed article that does what her willing environmental activist handlers want—scare people. Rest assured, we'll be following up our analysis here with a letter to Wintour and Vogue's editors asking for an explanation about how this article emerged unscathed through the magazine's fact checking process.
Update
For the latest on our challenge to Vogue see:
The Devil Does Journalism (Part II)
