The more things change …: milk pasteurization, food irradiation, and biotechnology in the New York Times

Abstract

Discussions of science in the news often revolves around issues such as reporter–scientist relationships, how an issue was covered, or how certain issues are chosen among a myriad of possible topics. The aim of this project is to compare coverage between technological stories to evaluate journalistic practices over an extended period of time. Using the journalists-as-interpretive-communities perspective, we argue that New York Times coverage of food technologies over the past century has actually changed very little as the same types of experts and claimsmakers are quoted, trajectories of the coverage are similar, and the cultural resources used within the stories have not shifted to some new form of journalism. We focus on debates surrounding milk pasteurization, food irradiation, and biotechnology.

Notes

1 Use of the New York Times is both an academic and convenience choice. According to Gitlin (1980), NYT is the newspaper of record for the United States, and it is one of the few newspapers which has easily accessible issues for the time period we needed. In addition, the main claimsmaker for pasteurization—Nathan Straus—lived and operated most of his milk depots in New York City.

2 For heuristic purposes, we have not included newspaper references in the reference section. Instead, we have tried to provide enough information within the body of the text for readers to find articles we use.

3 There is some evidence that Straus was also a major political player in New York City as well, though he did not hold elected office. He was asked to run for mayor of the city at least once, and seemed to have access to many government organizations, including health organizations which dealt with his milk depots.