The big-city papers fooled a jury about poultry

The big-city papers were celebrating themselves this week because they got a prize for their efforts to malign North Carolina’s poultry producers.

This wasn’t a prize that you’ve heard of, like the Medal of Honor or the Stanley Cup.
No, they got the 2023 McElheny Award, which is associated with the journalism program at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (In case you weren’t aware, the journalism profession is on the cutting edge of award-giving, with prizes handed out amongst themselves for just about every kind of aspect of writing or taking pictures you could ever imagine. There’s even an award in one contest for the best first sentence of a story.)

Important to note, if you care about these sorts of things, is that one of the “jurors” was a man who is also the president of a nonprofit organization in the Midwest that is funded by a range of special interest philanthropies to do its own form of “journalism.” We’ve told you about the dangers of that previously.

And, surprise, his organization has its own anti-agriculture mission. Indeed, the nonprofit’s stated mission is explicitly “to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions…” (See photo below)

That’s probably why this MIT contest’s runner-up story didn’t stand a chance – it was actually from the Midwest (Milwaukee to be precise) and was about preventable asthma in suffering children and the stories say the disease is triggered by mold, dust mites, cockroaches and mice in poor housing but is controllable with action. If only that paper had pointed a finger at agriculture.

Among the named members of the winning North Carolina team is the team editor of the project – who, surprise, is also listed as having held a “fellowship” at this same MIT journalism program. (Programs everywhere do like to recognize their alums, so probably nothing untoward about this one doing that as well. Another of the jurors was, surprise, also a fellow alum of the program.)

The award itself is supposed to recognize journalism that covers “issues in science, public health, technology, or the environment” with a purpose of promoting “science literacy” and that “breaks new ground and makes a difference.”

The big-city newspapers’ “Big Poultry” articles do none of those things. More on that in a second.
One of the jurors – who is perplexingly unnamed – was quoted in the MIT award announcement as saying: “With remarkable enterprise and persistence, these reporters from the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer penetrated the secrecy that obscures the scope and impact of thousands of industrial-scale poultry production farms in North Carolina…”

The NC Ag Partnership recently blew the lid off of this hypocritical “secrecy” narrative these reporters are trying to use. In fact, Fox News valued our story and took the Raleigh and Charlotte newspapers to task for ‘Advocacy dressed up as news reporting‘ – and for the first time revealed North Carolina’s pay-to-play anti-ag journalism push to a national audience of that size.

Further, our friends at NC Farm Families recently covered how laughable this “secrecy” allegation really is. And it’s hard to imagine what persistence it took to lay out the stories in advance, get some Google money to pay for it, talk to the anti-ag special interest crowd, and then get it all in print in time for contest season.

In case you missed it, you can read up on that here.

What else did the award people say about these misguided stories in announcing them?
“This series of articles uncovered the wide-ranging, unregulated impact of the poultry industry in North Carolina — from odors to pollution to the predatory nature of poultry contract farming,” the prize announcement says.

Whoa. Let’s stop there.

We think it’s important to remind you what these “Big Poultry” articles actually said about the “impact” to our environment:

• When ventilation fans push ammonia, a natural byproduct of manure, out of the barns, the gas converts into nitrogen. That can fall on land, streams and rivers.
• Runoff from farm fields overladen with animal waste can also cause environmental problems, feeding algae that reduces oxygen in public waterways, which can cause fish kills.
• Some poultry waste pollutants wind up in streams, creeks and other waterways, research says.
• Poultry waste was a source of unwanted organic nitrogen in the Neuse River basin, according to a 2016 study by N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Notice how those are all worded, carefully and without the hyperbole of contest judges.
Nitrogen can fall on the land. Runoff from fields can cause problems. 

Best we can tell, this particular prize came about after different newspapers across the country sent in their entries and then a handful of “jurors” chose the one they thought was the best. Good thing this wasn’t life or death – because this jury has clearly missed the boat.

Newspaper delivery drivers can wreck into others. Barrels of ink can spill on the ground. And journalists can libel others – even public law enforcement servants. 

Let’s continue.

When they say up there that “some pollutants” can wind up in some “streams” and that is based on what “research says,” they then link you to obscure academic studies or contested litigation in faraway places, like India or Maryland.

And that last item – which says “poultry waste was a source” of dissolved organic nitrogen in the Neuse River?

Well, that links you to a 2016 study of 2011-13 data that actually shows there are far greater impacts to the Neuse from our state’s urban conditions, such as from street runoff, septic systems and from soils.

As to even other water impacts? The study authors at least note: “We cannot discount inputs … from migrating waterfowl or the atmosphere.”

Wouldn’t it be hard to imagine that the Raleigh and Charlotte papers would ever devote two weeks of coverage and then go seek prizes by pointing to the places that have real impacts to water in our state?

Because you know and we know what the truth is – the real problems in our state are in their own backyards, not our farm fields.