Media make everyone neighbors, and thus when a man in Tacoma, Wash., reported finding a syringe in a can of Diet Pepsi and the word zipped around the nation at the speed of light, there were some predictable developments.
First, it became big news, then bigger news as other reports came in, initially in a dribble and then in a small cascade. Syringes were showing up in Pepsi cans all over the place. Other unusual additions to soda cans, nails and the like, also were reported.
A federal investigation was unleashed by the Food and Drug Administration, which was empowered to chase product-tampering cases after the 1982 Tylenol cyanide poisonings in the Chicago area, an enduring and frightening mystery that caused seven deaths.
A few days of it and a minor panic developed, with the media leaping to legitimize the reports and, perhaps inadvertently, lending credence to the sense that something was happening on a truly national scale as syringes started showing up in soda cans all over the place.
Anyone unfamiliar with the soda canning process (which must be about everyone) could easily conclude that there was some nefarious criminal afoot in the nation who had access to the Pepsi canning process and, for reasons only he or she knew, was putting syringes in the cans.
Undoubtedly, every news director and city editor worth a paycheck was searching for local Pepsi/syringe stories over the last week or so. The Associated Press surveyed its clients and found 50 reports of soda pop contamination from 23 states, including one from the Chicago area.
But by the end of the week, the Pepsi debacle was collapsing under the weight of a FDA statement that the agency’s investigators had been unable to confirm any product tampering with Pepsi-Cola at all.
In fact, the Pepsi scare looked more like a huge case of copycat false claims than product tampering. Within 24 hours of that FDA announcement, the story was dying, overwhelmed by reports of President Clinton’s Thursday night news conference and a million other small, but newsy, things.
In the end, the case said much more about society and media than it said about Pepsi-Cola, although the soda pop company can take some comfort in the fact that a vast number of people now know exactly how they get the stuff into the can and how careful they are to keep it all clean by spraying upside-down cans with hot water and the like.
Credibility is a mysterious entity, something that happens when a consensus develops through an informal process that includes the active participation of the media. Apparently, volume has a lot to do with it. The more reports there are of something happening, the more credibility each of the reports carries.
On the political stage, for example, the media’s recognition of H. Ross Perot’s political platform gives him credibility that even a billionaire could not buy. The more a reader reads or a viewer sees of Perot, the greater his credibility becomes. Quite quickly and without an electoral success, he becomes an integral part of the national political scene.
Something similar happened with the Pepsi-syringe story.
If the first report of a syringe in a can comes from the West Coast, and there are other reports from the East Coast and the Midwest and the South, then doesn’t that mean that these reports are accurate and that something of vast scope is happening? If it wasn’t happening, why would there be maps in the paper and on TV showing the states where syringes were found in cans?
But as the Pepsi case proves, it doesn’t mean that at all.
In fact, the experience provided a lesson that had nothing to do with contaminated soda-pop cans and everything to do with the frightening speed with which the media responds to almost anything, human weakness in the face of temptation and some very serious recent product tampering history.
A lot of the media reaction flowed from the 1982 Tylenol poisonings, when newspapers, magazines and TV wore the white hat because their role was to relay messages and stories about a genuine public health menace that was claiming the lives of people who took the tainted painkillers.
The Tylenol killings hit the public like a bucket of ice water, making it apparent to anyone that the marketplace was not safe, that products could be contaminated quite easily. The philosophy of product packaging changed after that incident, particularly in the drug industry.
And it had its effect on the media too.
Product tampering cases could become huge, compelling and highly competitive stories in a matter of a few hours. The public’s need to know in such cases is so strong that it helps fuel the media effort.
The drive to “localize” national stories by finding examples close to home plays a part too. The reporter who “finds” his own local victim will be rewarded for aggressiveness, either by getting good play in the newspaper or by winning time for an extended report on the local TV news.
All those elements open up the society and media to exactly what happened in the Pepsi-Cola story. A situation developed, obviously without outside direction, that immediately found everyone’s weakest point. Because of that, what was untrue seemed genuine for days.
It is now apparent that what happened in most cases (perhaps all of them, but time will tell) was that people put syringes in their Pepsi cans, hoping to join the great march into product liability settlements or at least get on television for a little while.
In two cases, according to the FDA, something actually did make its way into one Pepsi and one Coke can, a screw from somewhere in the production process in the case of Pepsi, and parts of a machine in the case of the Coke can. These things can happen when you are filling 20 million cans of soda a day.
There were confessions all over the place at the end of the week, some sparked by revival of conscience, no doubt, and others motivated by the news that eight people in Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylania, Ohio, California and Michigan had been arrested and charged with making false claims; more arrests were anticipated. The maximum sentence is 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
One other lesson from the Pepsi problem was that there are government agencies that actually work. The FDA will get a lot of attention because of its role in the Pepsi investigation and a lot of credit for being able to psych the caper out so well.
Along the way, one of its agents told a story that should send a message to all future product tamperers.
A few years back, a man in Florida complained that he had found a mouse in his beer. The feds moved in for their analysis, and the man was in deep trouble in a matter of days.
As it turned out, all of the brand’s beer was canned in Colorado, but the mouse was a species unique to Florida. Besides, every one of its bones had been broken in the process of being stuffed into the can. The man spent 18 months in prison for making false claims.
