Smithfield’s Pork PR Scam

By Tyler Lobdell/OtherWords

Smithfield is the country’s largest pork producer – and one of its biggest industrial polluters. But they don’t want you to think of them that way. Instead, the company likes to promote a conscientious, sustainable, family-farmer image, summed up with a simple catchphrase: “Good Food. Responsibly.”
In reality, the corporate giant relies on a sprawling network of polluting factory farms and slaughterhouses, responsible for widespread pollution of our air and water. And one of Smithfield’s most aggressive clean image initiatives relies on – if you can believe it – massive, leaky lagoons of pig manure.

Posted on February 25, 2021

Dear Pharmacists: Stop Selling Snake Oil

By The Center for Inquiry

A national science advocacy organization is urging pharmacists to be worthy of the trust that customers have placed in them to guide them in their health decisions by steering patients away from useless fake medicine in the form of homeopathy. The Center for Inquiry is asking the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners and its member organizations to ensure that these fraudulent products are treated as the snake oil they are.
“When they’re sick, American consumers turn to their pharmacists for their training, professionalism, and their personal connection to their communities,” said Nick Little, CFI vice president and general counsel. “One out of three customers suffering from an illness places themselves in the knowing hands of their pharmacist to tell them what treatment they should take. That is an incredible statement of trust in pharmacists’ expertise, and it is critical that they never betray that trust by recommending phony products that, at best, have no effect of any kind whatsoever.”
Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom can alleviate that symptom when it is diluted to the point that it no longer exists, save for the “memory” nonsensically alleged to be retained by water molecules. It is established scientific fact that homeopathic treatments have no effect whatsoever beyond that of a placebo.

Posted on February 24, 2021

When Algorithms Come For Journalists

By Parker Higgins/Freedom Of The Press Foundation

Journalists – especially those without institutional newsroom support – rely on tools from major tech companies like Google and YouTube for newsgathering, production and distribution as a matter of course. As these information giants publicly wrestle with controversial content moderation decisions that dominate headlines and congressional hearings, their decisions also run the risk of stifling routine reporting. When content is removed or an algorithm tweaked behind closed doors, news organizations and journalists are often left without any sort of transparency into the process or a clear path to appeals.
In the last month, Freedom of the Press Foundation and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker experienced this first-hand, with the temporary takedown from Google Docs of an online database we’ve used to track more than 2,500 tweets by former President Donald Trump attacking the media. We’ve used this public spreadsheet for data analysis over the years, and provided it to readers and other journalists to do their own exploration of Trump’s anti-media tweets and their effect on press freedom.

Posted on February 22, 2021

U.S. States Take Aim At Protesters’ Rights

By Jonathan Pedneault/Human Rights Watch

Peaceful protests are protected by the United States Constitution’s First Amendment as well as international human rights law. But a legislative assault aimed at eroding these protections is underway in several state legislatures.
It’s nothing new. Various states have long tried to curtail the right to protest. They do so by legislating wide definitions of what constitutes an “unlawful assembly” or a “riot” as well as increasing punishments. They also allow police to use catch-all public offenses, such as trespassing, obstructing traffic, or disrupting the peace, as a pretext for ordering dispersals, using force, and making arrests. Finally, they make it easier for corporations and others to bring lawsuits against protest organizers.

Posted on February 17, 2021

How The Christian Right Helped Foment Insurrection

By Sarah Posner/Reveal

The Jan. 6 Save America March, where then-President Donald Trump incited a crowd to attack the U.S. Capitol, opened with a prayer. Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser and White House adviser, the Florida televangelist Paula White, called on God to “give us a holy boldness in this hour.” Standing at the same podium where, an hour later, Trump would exhort the crowd to “fight like hell,” White called the election results into question, asking God to let the people “have the assurance of a fair and a just election.”
Flanked by a row of American flags, White implored God to “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace, against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.” Within hours, insurrectionists had surrounded the Capitol, beaten police, battered down barricades and doors, smashed windows and rampaged through the halls of the Capitol, breaching the Senate chamber.

Posted on February 5, 2021