Fact checking: Let’s hope it matches the editors’ bias

How can a freelancer lose his job? Simple: By actually being a journalist.

About two or three weeks ago, a magazine specializing in medicine contacted me. The email was as follows:

Dear Freelancer,

As you are able to understand the workings behind the EU and can decipher certain directives, we are interested in collaborating with you. We found an online petition protesting the ban of medicinal plants in France which was a result of a European text. Its seems to be buzzing a bit. Could you tell us what it is? 2000 characters would be ideal.

Good luck,
Balthazar

It’s not everyday that I’m asked by the editor-in chief to write on a certain subject. Pretty cool. I quickly did the calculations in my head: 2000 characters for this magazine should be worth 90 euros. The work is doable and it will pay my hefty phone bill from last month. Quickly I’m sold and I agree to the project. Take me to the health directives!

The facts of confusion

With just enough time to go to Brussels and investigate the European Counsel on its own turf, I set to work.

Act I: I comb through the petition – and in reading it myself I am terrified. My god, the EU wants to ban medicinal plants through an extremely expensive registration process (billions of francs!) that only large laboratories can afford! This would destroy millennial of know-how built by expertise herbalists, who save thousands of lives every year!

All this is nothing more than intense lobbying from the same pharmaceutical companies who control Brussels by gripping onto corrupt MEPs (Let’s not even get into the Commission). After reading the petition, I am ready to vote for Hunting-Fishing-Nature-and-Tradition.

Act II: With all the determination I have in my mission, I search for the notorious EU directive. The number was something like XXC49593/4589 blah blah blah. If you want something from the European Commission’s website, it’s better to have references, the title, release date and author – otherwise it’s a pain to find. *Poof* I find it.

I start to dissect it. The beginning is largely uninteresting. They recall the reasons why they are launching this directive (aka they want to justify their own salaries).

Trying to keep my eyelids open in reading the document, I finally cross something that interests me: the actual decision. I read it, I decipher it, I read it again because I have no idea what the hell I just read, and read it a third time because it seems so vicious, and BINGO! I have the passage that created devastation for the people of Europe! Paragraph 8:

With the objective of further facilitating the registration of certain traditional herbal medicinal products and of further enhancing harmonisation, there should be the possibility of establishing a Community list of herbal substances that fulfil certain criteria, such as having been in medicinal use for a sufficiently long time, and hence are considered not to be harmful under normal conditions of use.

A little farther down:

This Directive allows non-medicinal herbal products, fulfilling the criteria of food legislation, to be regulated under food legislation in the Community.

What can I say – Another victory for investigative journalism!

Stop the brainwashing:  ”We are no longer interested”

In fact, the evil EU is not really doing anything. It’s prohibiting the appellation of certain medicinal plants, but it does not restrict the use of them as they are not harmful to one’s health. In short, there is no need to beat around the bush – this petition is pointless.

Act III : Quite proud of myself, I send an email to the editor-in-chief explaining the situation and offering him my paper “Stop the brainwashing.” I later received his response:

Actually, no thanks. We are no longer interested.

Noooooooooooo. Good bye hard work. Good bye 90 euros.

I decide to rant anyways – Yeah, ok, you do your job and this is the result! All this is still Europe’s fault!

If I didn’t have a conscience, I would have simply validated the petition. But no, I actually did my job which lost me my cell phone bill.

Cruel world.

A colleague of mine who works for an American magazine told me they still pay him for the time spent working on an article, even if his research is ultimately futile. No matter if you do 3 hours of research, 2 hours of writing, 2 hours of interviewing – you still get paid. These Americans are kind of awesome.

To add insult to injury: In the aftermath, I told a colleague (yes, I have a few) my story who within two seconds wrote an article in Les Point explaining the whole petition story.

F***…and the freelance journalist gets screwed again.

Photo FlickR CC : Russel Roesner ; Chris Stromblad ; Zeke Reno.

Translation: Stefanie Chernow