Interview doesn't help Time

AgriTalk's Mike Adams had a good interview yesterday with Bryan Walsh - the writer of the Time magazine piece "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food".

You can listen to the interview here. You can find a transcript here.

Since the interview aired yesterday, there has been some reaction by those involved in agriculture -- from Twitter to Facebook to blogs.

You really should listen to it.

Comments on Twitter included:

• Time's anti-farm hit piece was one-sided by design (here)
  
• Walsh admits @TIME article was opinion piece. Claims entire magazine is now opinion based, not a news mag (here)
• Don't use @TIME mag as factual resource anymore. Walsh admitted stories are written based on reporters opinion not fact (here)
• If @TIME's Bryan Walsh had any credibility, he lost it during the AgriTalk interview (here)
• Bryan @TIME backpedals unsuccessfully in AgriTalk interview (here)

Here are a few lines from AgriTalk's Mike Adams, who conducted the interview (find his full reaction here):

Writer Bryan Walsh told our AgriTalk audience that Time now allows its writers to give their opinions and choose their story angle rather than feel obliged to give even the appearance of balance in their reporting. ...

Although Walsh claims he’s sorry if he comes off as anti farmer or anti food production his work will give many consumers an inaccurate perception of farmers and their work. There are two sides to every story unless the story is being written by Time magazine!

Chuck Jolley, a freelance writer for Cattlenetwork.com, had this to say about the interview (full thoughts here):

Walsh said he was allowed to take that angle he wanted to take and deftly avoided answering the question about the difference between "News" stories vs "Opinion" pieces and TIME magazine's duty to clearly identify the two.

He did place a tombstone on the old view of TIME as a leading news magazine. For those of us who grew up trusting TIME's reporting, to learn that they have shifted their purpose from reporting news to running 'op-ed' pieces by writers who may or may not know what they're talking about gives us pause at the grave site of a once great publication.

I don't see any reason to pile on, but it appears the interview did not help Walsh or Time.

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If you're interested, you can read more about the article in the post Time (magazine) is not on your side, or see a note Greg and Maru Whitmore wrote to Time by clicking here, or one by Don Hutchens here.