Jon Entine

Entine was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1974 with a B.A. in philosophy.

Entine co-directed the 1972 presidential primary campaign for Senator George McGovern in Sullivan County, New Hampshire. After graduation, he became the assistant director for the re-election campaign of Robert Drinan, a Democratic congressman from suburban Boston.

Entine has won 19 journalism awards, including Emmy Awards for television specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union and a National Press Club award in consumer journalism. He is also a public speaker on genetics and identity for the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Federations of North America.

In high school, Entine worked as a weekend copyboy for the CBS owned-and-operated TV station then known as WCAU. During his freshman year of college, he edited and produced the 11pm news for the local NBC affiliate in West Hartford/New Britain. In 1975, Entine was hired to write for the ABC News program AM America, which was renamed Good Morning America the following year. Entine worked for ABC News as a writer, assignment desk editor, and producer in New York City and Chicago from 1975-1983 for programs including the ABC Evening News, 20/20 and Nightline. He took a leave of absence from ABC News in 1981–1982 to study at the University of Michigan under a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in journalism.

Entine joined NBC News in New York in 1984 as a special segment producer for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, where he worked until 1990. In 1989, Entine and Brokaw collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, which was named Best International Sports Film of 1989.[4] From 1989–1990, Entine served as executive in charge of documentaries at NBC News. He rejoined ABC News in 1991 as an investigative producer for Primetime. In 1993 Entine produced a story with reporter Sam Donaldson on eye surgery clinics that led to a lawsuit against ABC News, Entine, and Donaldson.[5][6] The suit was dismissed by a federal appeals court, which concluded: "The only scheme here was a scheme to expose publicly any bad practices that the investigative team discovered, which is nothing fraudulent."[7] In 1994, Entine produced a prime time special on the Miss America Pageant, "Miss America: Beyond the Crown" for NBC Entertainment.

In September 1994, Entine wrote an investigative article titled "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?" The article caused an international controversy and led to articles in The New York Times and a report on ABC World News Tonight. The Body Shop, the British-based international cosmetics company, which until that point had been considered a model "socially responsible" company, tried to block the story from being published.[8] Following the controversy, The Body Shop's stock suffered a temporary 50% drop in market value. The case has become the subject of business and management ethics studies.[9][10]

Entine is the founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), operating as the Science Literacy Project, which is the umbrella organization for the GLP, Genetic Expert News Service (GENeS) and the Epigenetics Literacy Project. GLP focuses on the intersection of media, policy and genetics, both human and agricultural.

Entine has written three books on genetics and two on chemicals. Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution examines the controversy over genetic modification in agriculture.[11]

In 2007, Entine published Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People which examined the shared ancestry of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and addressed the question "Who is a Jew?" as seen through the prism of DNA.

Entine's first book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It was inspired by the documentary on black athletes written with Brokaw in 1989.[12] It received reviews ranging from mostly positive to highly negative in The New York Times.[12][13][14] Physical anthropologist Jonathan Marks characterized the book as "make-believe genetics applied to naively conceptualized groups of people."[14]

Entine supports the production of GMO foods, and has criticized writer Caitlin Shetterly after she wrote an article in Elle magazine saying that GMO corn had made her ill.

He was previously senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University where he began in 2011[15] and at GMU's STATS (Statistical Assessment Service).[16] Entine is also senior fellow and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, an organization he founded,[1] which focuses on the nexus of genetics, media, and public policy.

Entine joined the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as an adjunct scholar in 2002 and is now a visiting scholar. His research focuses on science and society and corporate sustainability. AEI Press has published three books written and edited by Entine: Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution?, which analyzes the impact of chemicals in agriculture; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing, which focuses on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds; and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture, which examined the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming.

• Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, 2000, ISBN 1-58648-026-X
• Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing, 2005, ISBN 0-8447-4218-X
• Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health, 2011, ISBN 978-0-578-07561-7
• Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution, 2006, ISBN 0-8447-4200-7
• Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, 2008, ISBN 0-446-58063-5
• No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extrajudicial Prosecution, 2009, ISBN 978-0-692-00282-7
• Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? 2011, ISBN 978-0-8447-4361-5