There were a load of fishy stories this year–

Like the story former New York Times reporter Marion Burros told… or didn’t tell. When NFI posted an open letter to journalists and John Stossel reported on it, Burros lashed out about our characterization of her work. Burros claimed our open letter was “filled with half truths and out-right falsehoods” and insisted she would right the record with her version. We never heard another peep from Burros about our letter or Stossel’s reporting on it-fishy if I don’t say so myself.

Number two on the list has to be the reporting that surrounded the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) most dangerous foods list. Only a few reporters noticed that things were amiss right off the bat when CSPI insisted tuna was the third most risky food to eat, when by its own calculations eight other foods on the list caused more illnesses. Hmm, that is a little fishy. But wait there’s more, only a select few noticed that at least three foods that are featured on CSPI’s Super Foods list also show up on its Riskiest Foods list-woops.

How about the fever stirred up by the U.S. Geological Survey when it released a report about an apparent increase in mercury levels in the North Pacific? Activist journalists and news release re-writers far and wide got in line to misreport this one. Headlines like Tuna Getting More Toxic heralded the report’s findings-the problem is that’s not what the report found. In fact it found nothing at all about fish. The USGS didn’t even test fish, just water. Rewrites and corrections ruled the day after that fishy little doozie.

One of my favorites actually comes from the tell-us-something-we-didn’t-know file but it still makes the top five. Greenpeace’s out-going executive director sat for a BBC interview and left a little nugget of a legacy behind by admitting that Greenpeace lies or “emotionalizes issues” as a matter of strategy. After explaining that Greenpeace’s claims of an ice-free Arctic by 2030 had “been a mistake.” He went on to say that “as a pressure group [Greenpeace has] to emotionalize issues and we’re not ashamed of emotionalizing issues.” To that I say, thank you. Thank you for explaining just how it is that you as an organization justify lying and distorting-it sounds a lot less fishy when it’s called emotionalizing.

By far the fishiest story of the year came to us from actor Jeremy Piven who claimed he had to drop out of a Broadway play because his over indulgence in sushi had led to a case of mercury poisoning. Little did he know his claims would make him the first person in this country ever diagnosed with mercury poisoning as a result of the normal consumption of seafood-oops (should’ a just said he had a migraine.) But he didn’t stop there because months after landing that whopper he said he had grown male breasts from drinking too much soy milk. Stay tuned to find out which extraordinary food-related malady Mr. Piven will thrill us with in 2010.