It was just yesterday that I sent the following letter to CNN International challenging its coverage of tuna.

June 9, 2009

Byron Harmon

Senior Executive Producer

CNN International

VIA Email

Dear Mr. Harmon,

I am writing to draw your attention to several issues regarding basic journalistic standards in reference to Arwa Damon’s report “Tuna Becoming Scarce.”

Ms. Damon’s package, which is currently posted on your website, is described in printed copy as a story that deals with “tuna sandwiches becoming a thing of the past.”

Ms. Damon’s report is about bluefin tuna. Bluefin tuna are not canned and are not used for “tuna sandwiches.” They are highly prized sushi grade tuna that can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single fish. To suggest that her report deals with the canned and pouched variety of tuna that so many consumers are familiar with is an absolute distortion.

What’s more, throughout her report, time and time again, her lack of attention to detail results in yellowfin tuna b-roll married to track about bluefin tuna. Yellowfin and bluefin are not the same fish and have very different sustainability stories.

Any suggestion that these tuna stocks are visually interchangeable is as ignorant as suggesting it would be acceptable for a reporter to use b-roll of Japanese people in a story about Chinese people because they share some similar features.

We ask that you correct these errors by removing this package from your website while it is being reedited and the printed copy rewritten.

Thank you for your attention to journalistic accuracy.

Gavin Gibbons

National Fisheries Institute

cc Arwa Damon

Reporter

Well, today I got a call from not the Senior Executive Producer in charge of CNN International but CNN’s Editorial Director himself, Richard Griffiths. Griffiths took the time to go through the report with me and discuss the points I made in my letter as well as others.

While we didn’t see eye to eye on all issues he was dogged in his insistence that he wanted to present an accurate and journalistically sound story.

He insisted that the reference to tuna fish sandwiches would be removed immediately and that editorializing by the reporter would also be removed from the story.

The discussion we had was professional, courteous and centered on getting the story right. There were no defensive presuppositions about motive or interest, just an understanding that NFI is concerned about news outlets following their own basic journalism tenets.

Let’s face it the bluefin tuna has a sad story to tell but damning other tuna species along with it is unfair and inaccurate. Today CNN demonstrated it understands that and objective balance won the day.