Newsweek and USA Today Need Standards for Opinion Writers

STACY MALKAN

Newsweek and USA Today Need Standards for Opinion Writers

Why are Newsweek and USA Today so willing to let special interests mislead their readers? Clear standards are needed for disclosing conflicts of interest.
Facts don’t matter in commentaries printed by Newsweek, so long as the writer “seems genuine.” That’s the takeaway from a troubling email exchange with Newsweek opinion editor Nicholas Wapshott in response to concerns and questions I raised about a recent commentary attacking the organic industry.

Newsweek: The Campaign for Organic Food Is a Deceitful, Expensive Scam
This Newsweek article (1/19/18) doesn’t mention that its author has been exposed as putting his name on Monsanto-written articles–but it does spend several paragraphs attacking the reporter who exposed him.

The organic hit piece in Newsweek (1/19/18) carried the byline of Henry I. Miller, who lost his platform at Forbes last year after the New York Times (8/1/17) revealed that Miller had published an article in Forbes under his own name that was actually written by Monsanto.

In his recent Newsweek article, Miller spent several paragraphs attacking Danny Hakim, the New York Times reporter who revealed that ghostwriting scandal; but Miller didn’t disclose to readers either the scandal or his collaborations with Monsanto.

Yet Monsanto’s fingerprints were all over Miller’s Newsweek article, as I reported (US Right to Know, 1/23/18). Miller used pesticide industry sources to make false claims about organic farming, and attacked people who were named on a target list that had been developed by Monsanto and Jay Byrne, Monsanto’s former director of corporate communications, who was quoted in Miller’s piece with no mention of the Monsanto affiliation.

None of this appears to bother Newsweek opinion editor Nicholas Wapshott, according to an on-the-record email exchange.

Miller ‘Flatly Denies’ Facts

On January 22, I emailed Wapshott to raise concerns that Newsweek continues to publish Miller’s commentaries without disclosing his relationship with Monsanto, and asked if he was aware that:

1. The New York Times reported in August that Miller had been caught publishing an article ghostwritten by Monsanto under his own name in Forbes, in violation of Forbes’ policy. Forbes ended its relationship with Miller and deleted all his articles from the site.

2. A 2015 internal Monsanto PR plan (recently released by lawyers involved in litigation against Monsanto) lists “Engage Henry Miller” as one of its first action items.

3. A source Miller used in his Newsweek article, Jay Byrne, is a former Monsanto employee (not identified as such). According to emails I reported here, Byrne worked with Monsanto to set up a front group of “independent” academics, secretly funded by industry, who attacked the organic industry as a “marketing scam,” the same theme in Miller’s Newsweek article.

4. Miller has a long history of partnering with—and pitching his PR services to—corporations that need help convincing the public their products aren’t dangerous and don’t need to be regulated.

Wapshott responded, “Hi Stacy, I understand that you and Miller have a long history of dispute on this topic. He flatly denies your assertions. Nicholas”

Henry I. Miller
Henry I. Miller: “He seems genuine.”

I wrote back to ask for clarification.

Hi Nicholas, to clarify:

...

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