One of the great things about writing a blog is that you have the opportunity to become very familiar with a particular topic. And the more familiar you become with a topic, especially one that is as controversial as raw milk, the more insight you gain into the strengths and weaknesses of the conventional media—especially the weaknesses.
A major lesson is that, even though “freedom of…the press” is actually written into the U.S. Constitution, the press in practice is much closer to the government than most people realize, and I suspect than the framers of the Constitution expected.
The exercise Don Neeper conducted in sending out a press release about how Autumn Valley’s raw milk was cleared of listeria contamination in both state and private tests vividly illustrates that point. As he notes in comments following my previous post, only one local paper picked up the news, and then wrote about it as if it came from the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets.
That begins to explain why the press releases from the state agriculture officials get reprinted nearly as is, yet when a farmer issues a release, it is pretty much ignored. (And by the way, I actually had reported on the Autumn Valley re-test near the end of my August 14 posting, which is why I didn’t use the subsequent press release; I did, however, want to monitor how well the press release was received, and appreciate Don doing the leg work to make sure we learned the results.)
I think it’s this tendency to trust the government, along with other “establishment” organizations, like the American Medical Association, rather than any out-and-out bias against small farms and raw milk, that helps explain the media giving short shrift to a farmer’s press release. Of course, you can argue that when the government and establishment organizations are biased against farmers, the effect is to create biased reporting.
Yet the fact that the biases are arrayed against small farms doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do what Lori McGrath of Autumn Valley did, which is to issue a press release to communicate her news. The fact that this release led to one newspaper pickup along with one web site pickup (regardless of its position) can be seen as positive. Maybe next time such news comes out, there will be three pickups. And after that, four. And who knows, maybe the agriculture officials will decide they should change their approach and issue releases when shuttered raw milk dairies are cleared to resume sales.
While the media rely heavily on the government for news handouts, the media can also be influenced by repetition, as well as what their competitors are doing. If they regularly see news releases responding to or following up on government releases, or competitor media providing coverage, eventually they may begin to pay attention. I suspect strongly that much of the discussion on this blog about raw milk, along with articles I’ve done for BusinessWeek.com, have helped spark the increased attention to the subject in places like The Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times.
By persisting, farmers can begin to do what politicians long ago learned to do—create their own images, rather than letting others do it for them.
We actually did a fair amount of prep work prior to running this press release, and compiled a list of email addresses and fax numbers from twenty or so newspapers and television affiliates in Lori McGrath’s area. I faxed it directly to the Albany and Syracuse offices of the Associated Press, and to four or five newspapers that didn’t provide reporter/editor email addresses. I also decided to use the paid service on I-Newswire to give us greater exposure, and it did get picked up by a handful of the internet news aggregators. (It will also permanently stay up on I-Newswire’s server and is the third result if you enter "Autumn Valley Farm raw milk" into Google.) I’d love to know whether or not the AP put it on the New York line, but I’ve never been able to find public access to the state AP news wires.
There is still a chance that Farm and Dairy magazine may mention the press release when their next issue comes out on Thursday, but that’s a long shot. Farm and Dairy has run raw milk related press releases in the past and their reporters have used me as a source, but upstate New York is a little outside of their geographical coverage region.
As David indicated, even though it doesn’t look like the press release is going to generate a lot of immediate coverage it was sent directly to most of the major news outlets in the area and somebody at each one had to have read it. The next time a raw milk related incident occurs an editor or reporter may dig that press release out of the filing cabinent and use the contact information to get additional quotes or background material. It may also lay the groundwork for the next press release from AVF or another farmer in the vicinity. And at least we did get a grudging mention in Lori’s local paper, so maybe that will bring a few more people down to her farm.
Doing a press release can be cheap if not free with a little legwork, and a number of people provided input and a second set of eyes for this one. Sally Fallon is also almost always willing to let us use her name and contact information, which helps give her exposure and provides a little more weight to an otherwise local report.