Jon Entine

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Jon Entine
Entine photo.jpg
Entine in 2008
Born (1952-04-30) April 30, 1952 (age 73)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation(s) Science journalist, consultant

Jon Entine (born April 30, 1952) is an American science journalist. After working as a network news writer and producer for NBC News and ABC News, Entine moved into print journalism. Entine has written seven books and is a contributing columnist to newspapers and magazines. He is the founder and executive director of the science advocacy group the Genetic Literacy Project, and a former visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. [1] He is also the founder of the consulting company ESG Mediametrics. [2] [3]

Contents

Early life

Entine was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into an Ashkenazi Jewish family from eastern Europe [4] and was raised in Reform Judaism. [5] He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1974 [6] with a B.A. in philosophy.[ citation needed ]

Television

In high school, Entine worked as a weekend copyboy for the CBS owned-and-operated TV station then known as WCAU. In 1975, Entine was hired to write for the ABC News program AM America , which was renamed Good Morning America the following year. Entine worked for ABC News as a writer, assignment desk editor, and producer in New York City and Chicago from 1975 to 1983 for programs including the ABC Evening News , 20/20 and Nightline . He took a leave of absence from ABC News in 1981–1982 to study at the University of Michigan under a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in journalism.[ citation needed ]

Entine joined NBC News in New York in 1984 as a special segment producer for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, where he worked until 1990. In 1989, Entine and Brokaw collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, which was named Best International Sports Film of 1989. [7] From 1989 to 1990, Entine served as executive in charge of documentaries at NBC News. He rejoined ABC News in 1991 as an investigative producer for Primetime . In 1993 Entine produced a story with reporter Sam Donaldson on eye surgery clinics that led to a lawsuit against ABC News, Entine, and Donaldson. [8] [9] The suit was dismissed by a federal appeals court, which concluded: "The only scheme here was a scheme to expose publicly any bad practices that the investigative team discovered, which is nothing fraudulent." [10] In 1994, Entine produced a prime time special on the Miss America Pageant, "Miss America: Beyond the Crown" for NBC Entertainment.[ citation needed ]

Body Shop controversy

In September 1994, Entine wrote an investigative article titled "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?" The article caused an international controversy and led to articles in The New York Times [ citation needed ] and a report on ABC World News Tonight .[ citation needed ] The Body Shop, the British-based international cosmetics company, which until that point had been considered a model "socially responsible" company, tried to block the story from being published. [11] Following the controversy, The Body Shop's stock suffered a temporary 50% drop in market value.[ citation needed ] The case has become the subject of business and management ethics studies. [12] [13]

Genetic Literacy Project

Entine is the executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), an organization he founded. [14] [15] The GLP is a non-profit organization that promotes public awareness and discussion of genetics, biotechnology, evolution and science literacy. [15] [16] [17] [18] The site presents articles on topics related to food and agricultural genetics, as well as human genetics. [19] It also aggregates articles from various published sources. GLP has posted articles taking positions against labeling GMO foods. [20] [21] In a Financial Times article, the Genetic Literacy Project site was described as a provider of information on genomics that is not readily accessible to the general public. [22]

Accusations of being a Monsanto front group

US Right to Know, an advocacy group funded in large part by the Organic Consumers Association, [23] [24] raised concerns after the GLP ran a series of articles in 2014 supportive of crop biotechnology after the scientists had been encouraged to do so by American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto. [25] The GLP said the authors were not paid for their articles. Entine remarked that he had total control of the editing process and that there was nothing to disclose. [25]

In 2020 and 2021 the GLP received US$741,183 and US$494,075 in donations, respectively. [26]

Books

Entine has written three books on genetics and two on chemicals. Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution examines the controversy over genetic modification in agriculture.[ citation needed ]

Entine's first book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It was inspired by the documentary on black athletes written with Brokaw in 1989. [27] It received reviews ranging from mostly positive to highly negative in The New York Times. [27] [28] [29] Physical anthropologist Jonathan Marks characterized the book as "make-believe genetics applied to naively conceptualized groups of people." [29]

In 2007, Entine published Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People which examined the shared ancestry of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and addressed the question "Who is a Jew?" as seen through the prism of DNA. In a review of this book, geneticist Harry Ostrer wrote that Entine's "understanding of the genetics is limited and uncritical, but his broad, well-documented sweep of Jewish history will inform even the most knowledgeable of readers." [30]

Organizational affiliations

He was previously senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University where he began in 2011 [31] and at GMU's STATS (Statistical Assessment Service). [32]

Entine joined the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as an adjunct scholar in 2002 and was subsequently a visiting scholar.[ citation needed ] His research focuses on science and society and corporate sustainability. AEI Press has published three books written and edited by Entine: Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution?, which analyzes the impact of chemicals in agriculture; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing, which focuses on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds; and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture, which examined the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming.

As of 2016, Entine was a senior fellow at the Institute Food and Agricultural Literacy at University of California Davis. [1]

In 2012 when asked about affiliations between the agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto and his consulting company ESG Mediametrics, Entine said, "Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That's the entirety of my Monsanto relationship." [3]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 "Gary Ruskin and Jon Entine Tangle over the GMO Corporate Connection". Corporate Crime Reporter. 29 April 2016.
  2. ↑ "Jon Entine". ESG Mediametrics. Archived from the original on February 12, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Philpott, Tom (February 24, 2012). "The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist". Mother Jones .
  4. ↑ Entine, Jon (March–April 2008). "Is DNA Abolishing Differences or Embracing Them?". Ancestry Magazine. pp. 42, 44.
  5. ↑ Entine, Jon (2007). "Chapter 1: The Dead Sea Scrolls of DNA". Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN   9780446408394.
  6. ↑ Finkelstein, James (December 1974). "Class Notes: 74". Trinity Reporter. Hartford, CT. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
  7. ↑ Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport, by Michael Oriard, Univ of North Carolina Press, 2007, pg. 224.
  8. ↑ Russomanno, Joseph (2002). "J.H. Desnick, M.D. Eye Services, Ltd., et al. vs American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., Jon Entine, and Sam Donaldson". Speaking our minds: Conversations with the people behind landmark First Amendment cases. Psychology Press. pp. 134–69. ISBN   9780805837674.
  9. ↑ "Libel suit against ABC's 'PrimeTime Live' dismissed". The News Media & The Law. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Winter 2001. Retrieved October 4, 2011.
  10. ↑ Posner, Richard (10 January 1995). "Desnick v. American Broadcasting Corporation". FindLaw.com. 94–2399. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  11. ↑ Dixon, Cyril (August 28, 1994). "Besieged Body Shop comes out fighting" . The Independent . London. Archived from the original on 2022-06-14. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  12. ↑ Carroll, Archie B.; Buchholtz, Ann K. (1 January 2014). Business and Society: Ethics, Sustainability, and Stakeholder Management. Cengage Learning. pp. 583–587. ISBN   9781285734293 . Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  13. ↑ "The Body Shop(A): Anita Roddick's Green Brand?". IBS Case Development Centre. ENT0019C. 2006. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  14. ↑ Sentenac, Hannah (2014-03-11). "GMO salmon may soon hit food stores, but will anyone buy it?". Fox News. Retrieved 2018-03-04.
  15. 1 2 "Mission, Financial Transparency, Governorship". genetic literacy project. Retrieved 7 March 2017.
  16. ↑ Richardson, Hillary. "LibGuides: Public Health Research Guide: Genetics and Health". libguides.muw.edu. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  17. ↑ "Five myths about gene editing". Washington Post. August 25, 2017.
  18. ↑ Anthes, Emily (9 March 2013). "Don't Be Afraid of Genetic Modification". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  19. ↑ "GMO FAQS". Genetic Literacy Project. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  20. ↑ Revkin, Andrew (November 2013). "A Risk Communicator Says Industry Should Embrace Labeling of Genetically Modified Food". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2020-02-26. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
  21. ↑ Van Hoewyk, Doug (October 23, 2015). "If GMOs are safe, why aren't they labeled? Straight answer to a valid question". Genetic Literacy Project. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
  22. ↑ "The secret genomic revolution". Financial Times. March 27, 2017. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  23. ↑ "Standing up for science". Nature Biotechnology. 33 (10): 1009. October 2015. doi: 10.1038/nbt.3384 . ISSN   1546-1696. PMID   26448065.
  24. ↑ Lipton, Eric (2015-09-05). "Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show". New York Times. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  25. 1 2 Kaskey, Jack (2 October 2015). "How Monsanto mobilized academics to pen articles supporting GMOs". Chicago Tribune.
    The [Genetic Literacy Project] said that such a disclosure isn't necessary because [Monsanto] didn't pay the authors and wasn't involved in writing or editing the articles.
    I got independent articles written by independent professors," Entine said [. . .]. "I ended up working with the professors to edit their pieces and I had total control over the final product. There is nothing to disclose.
  26. ↑ Genetic Literacy Project (2021). "Genetic Literacy Project - Annual Report 2021" . Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  27. 1 2 Nobody Does It Better: A journalist looks at the sensitive issue of how black athletes came to rule American sports, by Jim Holt, New York Times, April 16, 2000.
  28. ↑ Bernstein, Richard (January 14, 2000). "Books of the Times: The race to the swift. Or is it the swift to the race?". The New York Times . Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  29. 1 2 Marks, Jonathan (8 April 2000). "A feckless quest for a basketball gene". The New York Times.
  30. ↑ Ostrer, Harry (February 2008). "A genetic view of Jewish history". Nature Genetics. 40 (127): 127. doi: 10.1038/ng0208-127 . S2CID   28651435.
  31. ↑ "Founding CHRC Faculty Scholars". [The Center for Health and Risk Communication. Archived from the original on November 2, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  32. ↑ "STATS - Staff". George Mason University. Archived from the original on December 7, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
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