MindMover
MindMover's JournalReuters Ingrassia says he wants to see more hurricanes ...
Reuters' climate-change coverage fell by nearly 50% after a climate sceptic joined the news agency as a senior editor, a study has found.
The sharp decline in coverage since 2011, recorded by the Media Matters for America advocacy group, reinforces charges from a former staffer that Reuters cut back on climate stories under the influence of Paul Ingrassia, who is now the agency's managing editor.
Media Matters found a 48% decline in climate-change coverage over a six-month period, after Ingrassia joined the agency in 2011.
The New York Times and other news organisations have cut back on climate coverage, closing down blogs and redeploying correspondents, at times citing financial constraints. However, Bloomberg, Reuters' main competitor, has deepened its investment in climate change and sustainability coverage. The agency's founder, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been a strong advocate for action on climate change.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/26/reuters-climate-change-scepticism-coverage
Big Mac says get another job
Since I last knocked heads with The Atlantic's David Freedman over Big Food and its potential to "end obesity"—see his piece, my response, his (odd) response to my response, our joint appearance on a Minnesota Public Radio show, and one more follow-up by me—there has been more fast food news than I can keep up with, most of it involving McDonald's, a company Freedman places at the vanguard of the anti-obesity effort.
The first item involves wages. It doesn't seem to have occurred to Freedman that one way Big Food contributes to our national weight problem is by paying its vast army of workers a pittance. Poverty is heavily associated with obesity and other chronic health conditions. The industry profits by holding costs down, and it does that in part by paying as little as possible. A 2012 analysis by the Food Chain Workers Alliance found that 86 percent of the 20 million people who work within the food chain—that's a sixth of the overall US workforce—bring home less than a living wage. Food-system workers are 50 percent more likely to rely on food stamp (SNAP) benefits than the overall working population, the report found. Not surprisingly, the food-system workforce is getting restive—hence recent strikes by Walmart workers, as well as walk-offs by fast-food employees in New York City, Detroit, Seattle, and St. Louis and fast-food/retail worker strikes in Chicago and Milwaukee. Fast-food workers in seven cities plan to strike next week.
Perhaps in response to such mounting pressures, McDonald's was recently moved to gift its employees with a "Practical Money Skills Budget Journal," "brought to you by Visa Inc. and Wealth Watchers International." Get a load of the "sample monthly budget," which has generated much hilarity across the internet:
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/07/mcdonalds-budget-mcwrap
Profile Information
Member since: Sun Jul 31, 2011, 05:36 PMNumber of posts: 5,016
