Shanahan 1

Brenna Shanahan
Professor Yang
CMM306-01
18 October 2016
Scientists Claim GMOs are Safe to EatBut Are They?
Framing of Genetically Modified Organisms in the Media
GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are any type of organism in which its genetic
makeup has been modified through gene splicing, gene modification, and technology. Scientific
researchers have conducted studies uncovering the health effects of consuming GMOs, but the
consensus of nearly all agricultural scientists is that there is no correlation between GMO
consumption and health issues. GMOs have been framed not by scientific evidence but rather
by individual values and moral traditions such as in the health risk frame, the environmental
frame, and the liberty frame used by opponents of the bill (Hielsher et.al, 2016, 1). Both
presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton do not support labelling GMO
products even though over 90% of Americans support it. This issue has not been at the forefront
of the election recently; in July of 2016, Congress passed a bill that required all GMOs to be
labelled. There has, however, been controversy over how companies will find loopholes and how
the companies will choose to label their products; the bill does not require the companies to
make the label visible and they can instead use a scannable barcode. The medias framing of the
scientific evidence further divides those in favor of GMO labelling, mainly food corporations
and government officials, with those who are not, which are the average citizens.
Media tends to frame the issue of GMO labelling in frames that highlight uncertainty and
promote fear. When taking a closer look at the sources used to collect the information, one is able
to explain why certain media prefer to portray the issue in a hopeful or negative way. In some
media, journalists choose not to interview scientists on the debate and instead pull their
information from internal sources, the government, or the average citizen, causing the
information they are relaying to sometimes be skewed in regards to scientific findings.

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Moreover, information pulled from people with and without a scientific background typically
frame the issue in terms of a live debate with two opposing sides. This framing is often preferred
by journalists who want to elicit a strong reaction from viewers with their exaggerated news,
which further distances the public from the scientific reality, however objective and factual the
news may be.
Congress passed a federal bill this year that nullified Vermonts current GMO labelling
law and replaced it with a nationwide National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. This
bill states that all food companies must label whether or not
their product contains GMOs in the form of a scannable code. It
will go into effect after 2 years and there currently are not any
penalties for non-compliance. GMO labelling supporters claim
https://action.organicconsumers.org/o/50865/p/dia/actio
n3/common/public/?action_KEY =19494
A supporter of GMO labelling
vandalized a stop sign to increase
awareness.

that this doesnt constitute as disclosure and instead refer to

NBFD as the DARK Act which stands for Deny Americans

the Right to Know (Tell Congress: Repeal the DARK Act, 2016). DARK, the abbreviation
itself, has a negative connotation and illustrates the darkness that GMO labelers want others to
associate with the lack of transparency, literally and figuratively, of big food companies.
PR Watch, an investigative news reporting site, writes a fairly objective article
concerning the partnership of Monsanto and Bayer. However, the journalist, Jamie Corey,
focused more on the companies troubling past, dating all the way back to 1976 when
Congress banned PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) a dangerous chemical known for its
numerous health effects (Corey 2016). This information is factual, yet does not particularly
pertain to the recent news of the merging of the companies. The health risk framing by delving
into the companies past makes viewers more critical of GMO labelling as a whole because they
are the main opponents of this bill. At the bottom of the article was a description of the author as

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well as contributors; one of which is Lisa Graves, who was Deputy Assistant Attorney General at
the U.S. Department of Justice, who conducted research for the study. The government influence
to the article may have contributed to the reasons why the companies were framed in this
particular light.
Some journalists, like James Fairfield-Sonn, examine GMOs in relation to the world as a
whole. Fairfield-Sonn attempts to direct readers to the long-term environmental effects of
producing GMOs by studying three countries: Guatemala, India, and the United States. Rather
than choosing a country in the EU like France who require GMOs to be labelled, he chose to
discuss Guatemala, an underdeveloped country, India, a country with a high suicide rate of
farmers, and the United States, where the topic is highly up for debate (Fairfield-Sonn, 2016).
These three countries, although covering a large portion of the GMO landscape, does not make
up the entire political economy of GMOs which Fairfield-Sonn claims. By only focusing on a
few countries perspective on GMOs, the reader is not exposed to the more positive side of the
debate, where food companies, farmers, the government, and its citizens are for the most part, in
agreement as to the labelling of GMOs and are informed about the scientific health risks. He
references the high suicide rate of farmers in India even though there is no confirmed link
between Indian farmer suicides and the use of GMO cotton (Fairfield-Sonn, 2016, 7). Including
this issue along with the debate of GMOs in Guatemala and the U.S. adds to the more critical
view Fairfield-Sonn paints of Monsanto and GMOs in general.
Other journalists choose to pull from more scientific sources yet still use the health risk
frame, perpetuating the ongoing debate even further. CBS News covered a recent scientific
report on the safety of GMO foods that ultimately found that there was no correlation between
health issues and the consumption of GMOs. Although this report was issued by scientific

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researchers of high caliber and the information presented was factual, the news station decided to
add a level of uncertainty to the report through their word choice.
Rather than simply covering this story as fact and accepting what the scientists found as truth,
the journalists headlined the story Ok to GMOs? which turns the findings into more of a
debatable question. The heading Report: GMO foods safe, but no simple answers zooms into
the camera, as shown above, which implies that the issue of the health problems caused by

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/geneticallymodified-foods-are-safe-to-eat-report-finds/
CBS News broadcasted a news segment on a
recent scientific report regarding the health
effects of consuming GMOs.

GMOs is still unclear (Major Science Group, 2016). Despite using information presented by
scientists, the media still attempts to frame the issue of GMOs in either a health risk or
environmental frame to keep the debate alive. People are known to respond more to negative
news coverage over positive, which is definitely a contributing factor to journalists continuing to
use frames like these that elicit fear and uncertainty.
Many of the same frames are also used to support the other side of the debate, but are
essentially reversed to make the opposing point that there have not been any proven health risks
from GMO consumption and that the benefits outweigh the almost nonexistent downfalls to
consuming and producing GMOs. Cornell Universitys Alliance for Science uses key buzz
words such as the scare tactics of news outlets to portray the pro GMO labelers as negative.
There are benefits and pitfalls to GMOs, but deciding to mainly focusing on the environmental
and social benefits [and the] new advances in crop genetics focuses the audiences attention to

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the revolutionary agricultural change, attempting to make the public view GMOs as a positive
scientific breakthrough (Evanega, 2016). At the same time, Evanega uses the state independence
frame to argue that the GMO labelling bill hinders states from making their own individual laws,
essentially taking power away from the states and
handing it to the national government. Americans
especially pride themselves in their liberty, so
associating the GMO labelers with pro-government
control can make readers feel offended by the new
bill. Even the title of the article, Silver Lining in GMO
Labeling Law, implies that the labelling law was not

http://blogs.dunyanews.tv/12888/gmos-their-proscons-and-their-future/
There are hardly any people who dont take a stance
in the GMO debate. Many are either strongly
opposed or strongly for GMOs.

desired by the public in the first place.

Journalist Jacob Bunge of the Wall Street Journal
reports on the debate of GMO labelling from the
perspective of food executives. Frank Yiannas, the vice president of food safety at Wal-Mart,
realizes that many customers want to know if there are GMOs in their food and are hesitant yet
willing to accommodate to their needs. Like many other researchers and corporate people,
Yiannas believes that food producers and retailers may have to educate consumers to close the
gap between perceived and actual risk because much of the public is misinformed (Bunge,
2016). Yiannas is essentially pointing out that the consumers desires do not match up with the
current scientific evidence that is actually in favor of GMOs. Taking only the perspective of food
executives without exposing the audience to the publics take on Wal-Mart and other companys
compliance with the labelling law does not show the full picture and highlights only one side of
the situation. The reference to GMOs as genetically modified crops rather than organisms also

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plays into the frame of health risks and the lack thereof. Crops has more of a home-grown,
natural connotation than organisms does, which can suggest manipulated or unnatural items.
Learning about GMOs in the media through different frames causes confliction in society.
Although many news organizations remain objective, the information they choose to focus on
regarding GMOs and Monsanto play a role in shaping the opinions of viewers because it causes
them to look at the issue at a new angle, whether it be positive or negative. Media is relying less
on the expertise of scientists and researchers and more on perpetuating the tired debate
concerning GMOs. The Pew Research Center found that nearly 9 out of 10 scientistssay
GMOs are generally safe to eat, and even though there is a national labeling law now in place,
the public is more confused than ever due to the conflicting framing of the issue (Siegel & Verity,
2016).
http://gmoanswers.com
This illustration attempts to clear up the warped view
many supporters of GMO labelling have of these
foods.

References
Bunge, J. (2016). Food executives say
consumers want labels on GMO products. Wall

Street

Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/food-co-executives-say-consumerswant-labels-on-gmo-products-1475789267

Corey, J. (2016). Bayer makes deal with GMO giant Monsanto. The Center for Media and
Democracys PR Watch. Retrieved from
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/09/13143/bayer-makes-deal-gmo-giant-monsanto
Evanega, S. (2016). Silver lining in GMO labelling law. Cornell Alliance for Science. Retrieved
from http://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/silver-lining-gmo-labeling-law

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Fairfield-Sonn, J. (2016). Political economy of GMO foods. Journal of Management Policy and
Practice. 17(1). 60-70. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1788513675/fulltext/C9E8361294794B2FPQ/1?
accountid=43872
Gale, R., Null, G. (2016). Genetically modified organisms and the mentality of propaganda
control. Center for Research on Globalization. Retrieved from
http://www.globalresearch.ca/genetically-modified-organisms-gmos-and-the-mentalityof-propaganda-control/5550396
Hielscher, S., Pies, I., Valentinov, V., & Chatalova, L. (2016). Rationalizing the GMO debate:
The ordonomic approach to addressing agricultural myths. International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(5). doi:10.3390/ijerph13050476
Major science Group weighs in on safety of genetically modified foods. 2016. CBS News.
Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/genetically-modified-foods-are-safe-toeat-report-finds/
Siegel, K., Verity, S. (2016). What you need to know about GMOs. WebMD. Retrieved from
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/truth-about-gmos#1
Tagliabue, G. (2016). The necessary GMO denialism and scientific consensus. JCOM:
Journal of Science Communication, 15(4), 1-11. Retrieved from
http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/15/04/JCOM_1504_2016_Y01
Tell Congress: Repeal the DARK act. (2016). Organic Consumers Association. Retrieved from
https://action.organicconsumers.org/o/50865/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY
=19494