Michael Fumento

{{#badges: tobaccowiki}} Michael Fumento is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.

Fumento graduated in 1985 from the University of Illinois College of Law. "He has been a legal writer for the Washington Times, editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, and was the first "National Issues" reporter for Investors' Business Daily. Mr. Fumento was the 1994 Warren T. Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., a fellow with Consumer Alert in Washington, D.C., and a science correspondent for Reason magazine," according to a biographical note in a report he co-edited. "Fumento has lectured on science and health issues throughout the nation and the world, including Great Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Austria, Hong Kong, China, and South America," the profile continues. [1]

• Advisory Board, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Tobacco issues

Fumento is a graduate of the partly tobacco-funded National Journalism Center (NJC).[2][3] According to a 1993 Five year plan written by Thomas J. Borelli of Philip Morris Corporate Scientific Affairs department, PM "Support[s] the efforts of...the National Journalism Center to conduct policy forums and issue papers on junk science and health care reform."[4] Fumento typically assumes positions on tobacco issues that are in favor of tobacco companies. He has been a vocal critic of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 Risk Assessment on secondhand smoke.[5] In a July 7, 1996 article in the Rocky Mountain News, Fumento disputed whether the nicotine in cigarettes is addictive, stating "The FDA is using the addiction issue as an excuse to gain the power to regulate tobacco."[6]

According the National Journalism Center's profile of him, Fumento attended an NJC course in the fall of 1985 and has subsequently been "National Issues reporter, Investor's Business Daily, legal writer, Washington Times, editorial writer, Rocky Mountain News (CO), U.S. correspondent, A3 Umwelt (Austria)." Fumento has also held a number of positions at conservative think tanks, including being a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a science advisor to the Atlantic Legal Institute.

Pro-GMO (Which It Pays To Be)

"Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute," reported BusinessWeek in 2006. "The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book." Scripps Howard general manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson received a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." The grant was for Fumento's book BioEvolution published by Encounter Books. [7]

Fumento called himself "extremely pro-biotech" and said that, as he was soliciting financial support from "everybody" for his then-unwritten book BioEvolution, he told Monsanto, "The biotech industry is going to look really good, and you should contribute." Fumento said his recent columns, including a January 5, 2006 piece praising new Monsanto products, were not "quid pro quo." He added, "I think there's a statue of limitations on that." [8]

Fumento insists that there was nothing ethically wrong with his failure to disclose Monsanto's contribution to his book. "I acted completely ethically, and within a month or two nobody will doubt that," Fumento wrote in an e-mail to Businessweek.

Anti-Environmentalist

In a December 1998 article published in the Idaho Statesman, Fumento complained of "environmentalists' never-ending campaign against pesticides." His ire had been provoked by a Natural Resources Defense Council report titled, "Trouble on the Farm: Growing up with Pesticides in Agricultural Communities." He referred to NRDC as "a group of suit-wearing city slickers who rarely get closer to a farm than watching 'Green Acres' reruns." [9]

Fumento claimed, "Ultimately the NRDC does not want safe use of pesticides; it wants no use." He warned that, if NRDC were to have its way, Americans would be "forced to eat expensive, ugly, shriveled-looking organic produce and foreign competitors will have our farmers foreclosing at rates not seen since the dust bowl days." [10]

Books

Books Fumento has authored include: [11]

• BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World
• Science Under Siege
• The Fat of The Land
• Polluted Science
• The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS

• BioHype a critique of Fumento's Bioevolution from American Scientist Online

Contact Information

Michael Fumento
Hudson Institute
1015 15th Street NW
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005

Phone: 202-974-2406
Website: http://fumento.com
Email: fumento AT pobox.com

SourceWatch Resources

• Hudson Institute
• Pundit payola
• Monsanto

External links

• Deltoid on Fumento
• "Biography of Michael Fumento", accessed January 2006.
• "City slickers off target in pesticide report", The Idaho Statesman, December 15, 1998.
• Bonner Cohen, et al., ed., "The Fear Profiteers: Do 'Socially Responsible' Businesses Sow Health Scares to Reap Monetary Rewards?", February 2002, page 79.
• National Journalism Center, "Michael Fumento", accessed November 27, 2003.
• Eamon Javers, "A Columnist Backed by Monsanto: Michael Fumento's failure to disclose payments to him in 1999 from the agribusiness giant have now caused Scripps Howard to sever its ties to him," BusinessWeek Online, January 13, 2006.
• Howard Kurtz, "Monsanto's Man?", Washington Post, January 15, 2006.

References

<tdo>resource_id=38924 resource_code=fumento_michael search_term=Michael Fumento</tdo>