Sarah “Seeds” is an “itinerant activist,” part of a pack, a “subculture of environmentalists, anarchists, and animal rights advocates who go from city to city in search of the next big protest.” It doesn’t matter if they’re saving the rain forest, freeing Tibet, or protesting genetically altered food, as long as they “save the world.”

So wrote Jennifer Hanrahan of the San Diego Union Tribune, Friday, June 22nd, 2001, one of many reporters assigned to cover Beyond Biodevastation, the conference that runs concurrently and counter to the annual meeting of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Bio2001 was held in San Diego.

While Sarah “Seeds” was in attendance at Beyond Biodevastation, so were many others––university professors, and other scientists and geneticists, farmers, and concerned citizens, eager to engage in dialogue with industry and to participate in teach-in sessions (and take advantage of their First Amendment rights to gather). Unfortunately, the readers of the city’s daily paper never knew who these people were or what they had to say.

San Diego is hoping biotech will help it survive a devastated defense-based economy by becoming the nation’s third largest biotech center. More than 30,000 people work for at least 200 biotech companies that spent close to a billion in research and development last year. Did those facts influence the coverage?

As they say in investigative reporting, “follow the money trail,” and it was a money freeway to San Diego the week of Bio2001. Venture capitalists huddled in four-star hotel meeting rooms with eager executives talking deals many figures left of the decimal point. That fact wasn’t lost on the city fathers, the Mayor, or Governor Gray Davis, who embraced the thousands of biotech industry types converging on San Diego.

John Cannon, an editor of the Union Tribune, said that early on it was decided that the business department would cover Bio2001. Metro would cover the events in the street. The medical and science departments, which by the look of the paper do a capable job, would keep their hands off.
While the PR promises of biotech filled the paper’s pages, I saw no critical examination of those promises. No challenging, no investigating. Instead, the approach was “some people say this, while others say that.” Readers are supposed to decide for themselves who is telling the truth.

There was no mention of the unpredictability of a science that replicates DNA with the help of bacteria, viruses, and antibiotic markers. No challenge to the claim that fewer pesticides are needed on biotech crops. Readers weren’t informed that the industry regulates itself, “voluntarily consulting” with federal regulators on safety. There was no reporting on intellectual property laws that prevent farmers from saving seed. The one article that mentioned the work of Dr. Arpad Pusztai and the concerns about the monarch butterfly dismissed them both as unfounded.

If reporters aren’t willing to challenge, let others do it on the Opinion pages. But of the eight opinion/editorial pieces I counted in the paper running from June 17th-24th, the week preceding Bio2001, all were overwhelmingly positive. Not one voice of dissent was printed.

On the Opinion page of June 22, a “pro” piece ran opposite another, “Blind to the Promise of Progress” by staffer Joseph Perkins. He mocks critics, “The Luddites are coming, The Luddites are coming” calling BioDev organizer Brian Tokar one of those who “hopes to use San Diego as a backdrop to continue their disinformation campaign against biotechnology.”

Tokar, a Professor at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, submitted an opinion piece to the paper. Perkins did not return my many calls to inquire why it wasn’t run.

So what did the reporters of the Union Tribune concentrate on? Nine stories in all that week, three times the number of business stories, focused on the thousands of protesters and “activists” predicted to fill San Diego’s streets.

The city’s finest spent more than three million dollars getting ready. Full riot gear, barbed wire fencing around the convention center, helicopters flying overhead. “San Diego is no Seattle,” officers promised.

Anonymous police “intelligence,” the biotech industry, and city leaders were the sources. But there was no violence. Twenty were arrested, most for jaywalking. The largest gathering was under one thousand.

“Let’s engage,” was the urging from an organizer of BioDev.
However, amid the fearful reports, many locals apparently went to the beach or just avoided downtown as did the principal of the Children’s Museum of San Diego. “It was a great chance for our kids to see participatory democracy and non-violent protest,” he said. However, the kids were removed from downtown and the museum was closed.

While the media had an opportunity to spark discussion, challenge authority and answer questions, they went to the beach too. Industry declined any debate. “Looks more like Biofizzle than Biodevastation,” said a spokesman for the pro-biotech Alliance for Better Foods.

Reporter Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson, this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize winners for North America, spoke at BioDev about the public’s right to know.