On The Media

I appreciated your attention to the world food situation and coverage by the media, but I was struck by the lack of mention of organizations like Oxfam, Food First, Bread for the World, and a significant number of agricultural economists who have focused on this subject for decades. There is also a discipline of agricultural communications which wasn't mentioned. Whether or not the main stream media have been covering the story, a significant number of the people seem to have maintained enough awareness of the topic to keep many hunger oriented NGOs organizations in business. Perhaps this is an indication of how many people don't limit themselves to information provided by the main stream media.

Some of Paul Roberts' comments seemed to be on the edge of self serving. His assessment that the US media is not covering the story very well may be true, but wouldn't we expect such an assessment from someone who has his own book to sell on the subject? And the new generation of food journalists is likely to have come from those with experience of studying energy, as he did.

Mr. Roberts is a relatively new to the food beat, and I would have liked to have also heard from someone who had been working on the subject while Mr. Roberts was doing other things.

With a reported demand of voters for more media coverage of poverty, it is likely that we will be hearing much more about this subject in the near future.