Death from GMOs

Alexey Vodovozov, "Trinity variant" 

The news of the death of a Spaniard who ate a tomato with a built-in fish gene stirred up the Runet. The first to unsubscribe was "Notepad.ru", then the sites of the second echelon were pulled up, then the wave rolled to URA.ru , "Economics Today", " <url>", the 31st channel of Chelyabinsk, the neighbors - the Ukrainian "Correspondent" and "News of Armenia" – also caught up, they reposted social networks. Most publications traditionally reprinted the text from each other, but some quite honestly worked out the information guide. For example, the Federal News Agency managed to interview experts from the Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, the Institute of Nutrition, and breeding specialists. However, those who have at least once acted as a commentator remember perfectly well how it usually happens: you get a call from the editorial office, call the infopod and ask to speak out. It is clear that the respondents answered the question: "Can imported proteins cause allergies?": "Yes." Only some experts doubted the reality of the incident, but their voice was never heard.

The motivation of journalists is clear: there is a fried fact on a very relevant topic; if it is replicated, you can collect good traffic. At the same time, no one bothers to check if there was a boy. Meanwhile, there are three ways to check the news about the killer tomato: the shortest, the shortest and a little longer. But in any case, the time you need to spend on the search does not exceed 2-3 minutes.

Option one, the shortest. The sites spreading the scandalous story mention the source: World News Daily Report (WNDR). People who have been working with news for a long time should know this portal well. We once had the same – FogNews.ru . Their specialty is fictional news. And as recently as in May of this year, RIA Novosti and the Rossiya 24 TV channel were already stepping on the rake of WNDR, reporting on the sixth heart transplant to Rockefeller. Therefore, an experienced journalist, seeing that the source of the infopod was WNDR, should have simply forgotten it as a nightmare.

The second option is short. Suppose an editor or newsman has never encountered WNDR and similar resources. But he definitely should have been confused by other headlines from this site: "Hitler is actually a woman", "Fish eat psychotropic substances from the sewer and get hooked on them", "a 14-year-old virgin got pregnant from a flu vaccine", "Hells Angels" (a gang of bikers repeatedly accused of drug trafficking) protest against legalization of marijuana."

"WNDR acknowledges full responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and their fictional content. All the characters in the articles on the site, even real people, are completely fictional, and any coincidence with living people, dead people or undead is purely a miracle."

Option three, more authentic. Even if we assume that the editor has never heard of WNDR at all, and found the news already on the Russian website, it can still be checked – the way journalists usually have to check all their sources.

Step one: traditionally, everyone refers to each other, so we go to the site where the foreign source is still mentioned. As we have already figured out, everything points to the portal World News Daily Report. You can immediately go to it and search there. You can Google Spain tomato fish death GMO – and the first result is ours. At least on it the news appeared first, on January 18, 2015. That is, the reason is very outdated.

Step two: carefully read the news itself. We find the name of the victim – Juan Pedro Ramos, as well as the fact mentioned at the end of the special statement of the Spanish Ministry of Health on this tragic case.

Step three: go to the website of the Spanish Ministry of Health, in the search bar we score "Ramos OGM", where "OGM" is the Spanish abbreviation of GMOs (organismos genéticamente modifcados). We get zero results. That is, it is already clear that the source does not deserve trust, because he is lying.

Step four: we google Ramos organizmos genéticamente modifcados to cut off sites with left–wing abbreviations, and go out for a little investigation, where we finally make sure - fake, the photo was taken in 2006, and not 24 hours before death, it was taken from Flickr, it's not a resident of Madrid, but an American Matt Reinbold, there were no statements from the Carlos III Hospital, the doctor-speaker is not the same at all and not from there, in general, a classic of the genre of any fake news.

In order to carry out the simplest fact-checking, medical and biological knowledge is not needed. Yes, a specialist will see a lot of inconsistencies in the news, for example, a mention of a certain antibiotic resistance gene that did not allow the victim's leukocytes to save his body from the fatal consequences of allergies. But in order to take these four steps, you need to be at least a journalist. However, it is necessary to strain, and such a model of behavior is not in fashion today, it is much easier to pull out a fake that has already become stale and feed it to readers, since the soil in the form of a total GMO phobia has already been prepared for this.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru

06.11.2015