Some media bury China as tainted food source

Source of a contaminated food item --- whether for humans or animals --- is an essential element of a news story.  So Grumpy Editor finds it interesting where the known source was placed in Friday’s coverage on at least 348 dogs and cats that died earlier this year as a result of a tainted ingredient.

Most newspapers ran an Associated Press story based on results of a Michigan State University study.  But many of those newspapers used only a few paragraphs of AP’s 13-paragraph piece.  In so doing, “The contaminated pet food was imported from China and sold in North America” line never made it into print because that was in the last paragraph.

Reuters health and science editor Maggie Fox got right into it with a second paragraph that read: “Ingredients imported from China were found to have contaminated some pet food.”

Russia’s Pravda Online ran most of the AP story but clipped the report’s last paragraph that mentioned China.

The New York Times condensed the AP story into one large paragraph and included most of the wire service’s last paragraph mentioning China.

Bloomberg cited China in the third paragraph of its nine paragraph version.

What’s baffling, however, is that the original Nov. 29 news release from Michigan State University contained no reference to China.