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When it comes to GMOs we don’t trust BBC ‘experts’, public survey reveals
How adequately and respectfully are public concerns about genetic modification in food and farming represented by the BBC?
A recent BBC Panorama programme, entitled GM Food – Cultivating Fear, suggested that opposition to GMOs is “morally unacceptable” and that those who oppose GMOs are prone to “making things up” instead of relying on facts and sound science.
It further suggested that the concerns and values of those who oppose agricultural GMOs are so fluid and insubstantial that they would abandon them if GM food could be priced cheaply enough.
In the days following the programme there was considerable criticism about its narrative and the way that it framed the issues in support of a particular and partial point of view.
Giving the public a voice
The public can, of course, complain to the BBC about programmes which it finds offensive or unbalanced, but such complaints can be – and many argue, often are – easily ignored.
One of the goals of Beyond GM is to help raise awareness that genetic modification (GM) in food and farming is not simply a science issue.
In our view much of the polarisation in the GMO debate is due to this kind of reductionist framing. We also want to bring the wider public back into the GMO debate and seek to ensure that people who have concerns or questions on the subject of genetic engineering in food and farming are given ample space to express them and that those views are respected.
For these reasons, in the wake of the Panorama programme we endeavoured to provide a space, however limited, for broader public comment by undertaking a survey and gathering comments which explore the views of an informed public about the way its views, and the issues around GMOs, were represented by this programme and by the BBC in general.
Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat http://philosophers-stone.co.uk
Source: http://www.philosophers-stone.co.uk/?p=1070
