By Stacy Malkan
USA Today fell to a new low in science and election coverage this week with a column speculating about presidential candidate Donald Trump’s science agenda, written by two members of a corporate front group that was not identified as a corporate front group.
The column, “Would President Trump Be a Science Guy?”, was authored by Hank Campbell and Alex Berezow of the American Council on Science and Health, a group that promotes various corporate agendas via its science commentaries while secretly receiving significant funding from corporations, according to leaked documents reported by Mother Jones.
ACSH has made many indefensible and incorrect statements about science over the years – for example, the group has claimed there is no scientific consensus on global warming, that “fracking doesn’t pollute water or air,” and that “there is no evidence ” that BPA in consumer products is harmful to health.
A paper trail further suggests that ACSH works quid pro quo for its corporate funders. In one email from 2009, ACSH staff solicited a $100,000 donation from chemical giant Syngenta to produce a paper and “consumer friendly booklet” about pesticide exposures that would help defend Syngenta’s pesticide atrazine. The donation was to be “separate and distinct from general operating support that Syngenta has been so generously providing over the years,” according to the email.
In 2011, ACSH released a book written by Jon Entine, along with an abbreviated position paper, about the public’s “irrational fear of chemicals,” featuring atrazine as a primary focus.
[For more see: Why You Can’t Trust the American Council on Science and Health ]
None of this context was apparent to readers of USA Today’s Trump Science column written by ACSH president Hank Campbell and ACSH senior fellow Alex Berezow.
The main point of the column seems to be to plug their pro-industry websites and promote themselves as thinkers of science. Without many facts to illuminate Trump’s science agenda, the authors are left to engage in naval-gazing speculation, and to “imagine Trump championing a moon colony” because of “his fondness for real estate.”
A second big problem with the column – besides the fact that it promotes the science ideas of a corporate front group that isn’t identified as such – is how it normalizes the notion that it’s no big deal to have a major party presidential candidate whose policy ideas are so opaque or hidden that media outlets are reduced to runaway speculation just to have a story on the topic.
Let’s see (belly gaze), will science get a “funding bonanza” from President Trump, or more of that unpleasant vaccine talk? We’ll just have to cross our fingers!
This type of speculation is not normal; it’s not acceptable. USA Today’s readers don’t need to hear theories from corporate front groups about how Trump might view science. They deserve to have these questions put to candidate Trump himself until he answers them.
They deserve to read not one more story about Trump that isn’t grounded in facts and serious journalism about his policy positions – and especially not a self-promotional exercise from a corporate front group disguised as a column in the nation’s most widely circulated newspaper.
Stacy Malkan is co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a food industry research group that voluntarily discloses its funding here. She is a former journalist and author of the award-winning book, “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.”
