When communicating badly: a meeting on food alerts

Does mozzarella make you sick? Is meat carcinogenic? And is the bird still a danger? Often Food alarms take the media attention around the world, conquering the front pages of newspapers and the opening of newscasts for more or less long periods. Until they burst like soap bubbles, or slowly deflate. To then return, cyclically, starting over the waltz of the covers. Yet every time the communicators make the same mistakes. And readers, or spectators, inevitably react like the previous time.

Al Festival of Food Journalism they talk about it Stefania Stecca of the University of Turin e Bartolomeo Griglio of the Asl To5, in a lesson - addressed first of all to journalists and those who make communication - to be held Friday 26 February at 12.10. We will start from the searches of the University of Turin to explain the techniques for dealing properly with crisis communication when a food alert case breaks out. The meeting will be moderated by a fierce one Roberto Rabachino, president of the ASA, the Italian agri-food press association. That explains: "Food Alerts? We need to do a sociological analysis, asking ourselves what we want to communicate to people, and an economic one, asking ourselves which lobby is convenient for a certain piece of news to come out and why. In front of cases like that of carcinogenic red meat, or others in the past , it is right to communicate every news correctly, citing credible sources, and writing clearly for those who read or listen, but it is incorrect to make reader-catcher titles that often distort what is written in the articles. "ethics, deontology and professionalism. If instead the alarm is spread by anybody through social media, the flow of information becomes uncontrollable. But the journalist must always distinguish himself and inform correctly".

By Daniele Angi