Fark found an interesting article describing the 9 biggest media-fabricated business scare stories of recent years. Remember that Food Lion story that almost destroyed the chain? Yeah...
that was bullshit. Well, they were doing it occasionally; the scary things is that they probably aren't the only ones. They just happened to get caught because of a political vendetta.
The worst one was DDT -- and not the one popularized by Jake Roberts. In spite of everything you've heard about DDT's effects on the environment, the insect-killing poison has saved a lot more (human) lives than many give it credit for, and hasn't had nearly the negative environmental impact certain media reports claimed. These facts led to both the ban and eventual reinstatement of the mosquito-slaughtering chemical. If life were full of easy decisions, there would be a cheap poison that killed mosquitoes without harming other life in any way. Unfortunately, it isn't.
Read the full article/post
here. Yes, I know who runs the site. It doesn't change the fact that on certain rare occasions, Big Media gets a bit overzealous in their societal police role.
links: digg this del.icio.us technorati reddit