Two weeks ago The Economist was taking unsubstantiated pot shots at seafood and ended up printing a letter from NFI after we exposed its shoddy reporting. This week it’s back on the watery warpath taking Greenpeace talking points as fact and disparaging safe, healthy, sustainable Alaska pollock.

What gives Economist? Since when did this venerable publication become a distortion filled eco-activist rag?

This time the reporter plainly ignored guidance from the At Sea Processors Association and evidently didn’t even attempt to talk to National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Fisheries Institute or the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (comprised of all of the major at-sea and shore-based producers of pollock products in Alaska.)

But she sure did speak to Greenpeace and what a fish tale they told her.

One time could be a lark… two times is a pattern… will there be a third?

Economist editors need to get their shop in order and decide that balanced, objective reporting is a tenet of journalism not an addition that’s merely nice to have.

Have a look at our letter to her editors below:

September 11, 2009

Emma Duncan

Deputy Editor

The Economist

25 St James’s Street

London SW1A 1HG

Via Email

Dear Ms. Duncan,

I was pleased with your response to my last correspondence and happy to see our Letter to the Editor printed in The Economist, however I am dismayed that I again find myself writing to you about your magazine’s fisheries related reporting.

Your September 10th article A tale of two fisheries suggests that The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has a “flawed understanding of the science involved” in managing the Alaska pollock fishery and is contributing to efforts that have lead it to, according to Greenpeace, “the verge of collapse.” This reporting is, once again, poorly sourced and erroneous.

Your reporter failed to contact The National Fisheries Institute or any of the leading Alaska pollock organizations for this article but did contact Greenpeace and simply reported its rhetoric as fact.

The real fact is Greenpeace in the United States has been and continues to attempt to raise funds by promoting a scare campaign in which it suggests Alaska pollock is on the verge of collapse. Alaska pollock is one of the world’s best managed fisheries and is quite simply not on the verge of collapse.

In October of 2008 NMFS assessment scientist Jim Ianelli explained to the publication IntraFish that the mid-water Pollock population was down but because of water temperature, not overfishing. What’s more, he explained, NMFS expected that once it assessed the groundfish population they would find the “missing fish,” it did. Please find this explanation below:

• Because ocean temperatures were cold again for the third straight year, more pollock kept closer to the ocean floor than they normally would, he said, skewing the survey results. “The mid-water survey is effective down to a half-meter from the bottom, but for the assessment numbers that get presented, we only go down to three meters from the bottom,” said Ianelli. The groundfish survey surveys the bottom, and when those numbers are calculated, estimates were 92 percent of the biomass that was expected, he said. “We were so remarkably close to expectations,” said Ianelli. “That is about three million tons of fish on the bottom, so if you add those two together it’s roughly four million pounds, which is the number seen in both surveys.”

What’s more IntraFish asked the NMFS scientist point blank if there was any overfishing of Alaska pollock indicated by any of its research. His response?

• “Not by any measure for this upcoming season.”

NMFS is on the record with detailed science that contradicts Greenpece’s vague rhetoric and, as you reported, the world renowned Marine Stewardship Council agrees with that assessment.

Two independent, science-based organizations vehemently disagree, on the record, with Greenpeace yet The Economist prints an article that is allowed to conclude that Alaska pollock is subject to “overfishing,” is on the verge of “collapse,” and those managing the stock have a “flawed understanding of the science involved”-all that based on Greenpeace rhetoric.

Greenpeace is wrong about Alaska pollock and The Economist is wrong for having once again allowed an agenda driven voice to spout its rhetoric unopposed.

The Economist Group touts itself as “the leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs” tied together by the “objectivity of our opinion.” In your most recent efforts, with respect to coverage of fisheries issues, your reporters seem to have forgotten the balance and objectivity part of The Economist mantra.

Thank you for your timely attention to this letter. We once again look forward to your response.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc John Micklethwait