Should journalists speak at science industry financed outreach events?

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With media budgets shrinking, it’s common for freelancers to add to their incomes with side projects. But is it a conflict of interest (COI) for a columnist who covers food and agriculture to take money from agrichemical industry interest groups?

The U.S. Right to Know FOIA requests focused on publicly funded professors, agrichemical companies, PR firms and front groups, and did not include journalists. But the names of a few journalists, including Tamar Haspel, turned up.

One document describes the June 2014 Biotechnology Literacy Project, a group for which Tamar Haspel is listed as a faculty member, conference called “Risk and the Future of Food: How Can Scientists Best Engage the GMO Debate with a Skeptical Public?” — a project that sounds remarkably in line with Monsanto’s PR effort to get “white hat” experts promoting GMOs.

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In a Post chat on October 7, I asked Haspel to explain which groups pay her and how much, and whether it was a COI to get paid by agricultural interest groups and also to write about these issues. Haspel answered:

You can find a complete list of the places I speak, and the criteria that I use to decide whether to speak, at tamarhaspel.com.  In short, though, if you believe that any group involved in agriculture, with interest in or an opinion on biotechnology, is a group that no journalist should be associated with, there’s not much to talk about here.

But Haspel doesn’t disclose who pays her, or how much. She also declined to explain how the Biotechnology Literacy Project fits with her criteria for having more constructive debates about food issues.

Read full, original post: Buckraking on the Food Beat: When Is It a Conflict of Interest?