In
his new book, A Bone to Pick, and in
an October 2012 column in the New York Times, columnist Mark Bittman called for a traffic light-type label for
foods. HOTH proposes a similar label for columnists.
Red
would be for conservative columnists, blue for liberal writers and yellow, of
course, would be for columnists who use sensationalism and distortion.
This
would allow readers “to make truly
enlightened decisions” about the columns they read, letting them know how much
stock to put in a column written by, for example, a “yellow” journalist who
touts organic produce as somehow safer than conventionally grown produce or who
believes the welfare of pigs raised outdoors and exposed to the elements and
diseases is better than the ones raised in clean, climate-controlled barns.
HOTH realizes such columnist labels, like Bittman’s food labels, might affect jobs
and people’s lives, but let’s not quibble about such trivialities. Readers have
a right to know.
