A Look at the Once-Respected Media

A Look at the Once-Respected Media

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

It’s August, a time when our part of the world kicks back to enjoy the last gasps of summer and the warm weather. The crickets are chirping, the mosquitoes are drawing blood, and make sure to check yourself for ticks, if you’re spending time in the great outdoors. The last thing you want is Lyme Disease – take it from someone who’s been there, done that.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot going on in tech, from what we’re seeing reported, but since it’s August, it’s a good time to kick back a bit and take a look at reporting itself.

We know about disinformation/misinformation. Old news. What we’re talking about is the media’s focus on non-news and even obfuscation, or as we like to call it, to take a page from a once-venerated news organization: all the news that we feel is fit to print.

Case in point: “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations program in 2012 funded All Things Bugs, a project to “develop a novel food product made from insects to treat malnutrition in children from famine stricken areas of the world,” according to Eurasia Review,” relative news upstart The Defender reported. “All Things Bugs has since expanded into the development of genetically modified insects. With funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), “we are using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and other methodologies to develop base technologies for creating insects as a new bioresource,” the company states.

DARPA is a research and development agency that operates under the U.S. Department of Defense,” the article continued, meaning your tax dollars at work.

All Things Bugs said that while insects are “a very sustainable source of protein,” it “is innovating to make them a feasible commodity for the food industry.”

The once respected Newsweek chimed in on the subject, saying that “According to one recent social media post (on Reddit), Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates has also weighed in on the issue, encouraging others to eat crickets, not for the sustainability of the planet, but because of their supposed health benefits…However, the claim that Gates has recommended eating crickets “to stay healthy” has not been verified.”

Well, if the purpose of eating bugs is to address malnutrition, doesn’t that imply that they’re healthy or at the very least, have health benefits, especially given the fact that Newsweek itself reported in the same article that “In 2012 the Gates Foundation also granted $100,000 to All Things Bugs, LLC to “develop a method for the efficient production of nutritionally dense food using insect species.”

Did we miss something?

Even the language has changed/been distorted in reporting:

Rain is now a flood warning

Snow is now a Snow Warning

Wind is now a Tornado/Hurricane Warning

Summer is now an Extreme Heat Warning

Winter is now an Extreme Cold Warning

Speaking of media ‘distortions,’ “Joe Rogan is reportedly suing MSNBC for $30 million, alleging that the network deceptively edited an episode of his podcast to falsely imply he endorsed Kamala Harris for the upcoming U.S. presidential election,” the Tribune reported.

Now, back to our story.

Focusing on the nutritional value of insects is no doubt one way of making them more palatable to a leery public, pun intended, but truth be told, insect-based foods don’t require FDA approval. Since insects have inadvertently made their way into various processed foods for eons, “lax U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations — under which many insect-containing foods can be classified as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS) — “means they don’t require testing” and enable the FDA to “look the other way,” said The Defender.

Not do we know what the long-term health effects are with such a diet, considering that no studies have been undertaken. With the recent reversal of the Chevron Doctrine, we wonder how much longer the agency will be allowed to function willy-nilly.

As for the Newsweek article, does it matter if college dropout Bill Gates, who is not a doctor, a nutritionist nor a food scientist, feels that eating bugs is healthy, and we’ll admit that we personally have no appetite for the buggers, double pun intended. The real question is, why is the FDA looking the other way? While they may regard insects that inadvertently make it into the food chain as GRAS, what about insects as the main course/a staple? What would they say on that subject, and never mind that no long-term studies and as far as we know, no studies at all have been undertaken.

Our best guess?

Crickets.

Onward and forward.

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