In 1997, a 14-year-old Idaho high-school student, Nathan Zohner, did a memorable science-fair project entitled “How Gullible Are We?” — a survey of 50 high-school students asking for their opinions on dihydrogen monoxide. One recognized the chemical as water; 43 wanted it banned.
It’s fair to imagine that those 43 are today among those leafing through the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, fingers a-tremble. We’ve editorialized before about the Inventory’s annual conclusion that mining is the biggest polluter in the United States, a conclusion based on totalling all the earth-moving large mines do and multiplying that by the metal content in the ore and waste. The answer — “toxics,” measured in the billions of pounds — falls somewhere in the range spanned by Mark Twain’s “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Now all three can be useful to journalists looking for a good old-fashioned rake through the muck. Last month, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver published a tale of toxic releases around Victor, Colo., based on a zip code search of the Inventory. Yes, anyone with an elderly aunt in Victor is mailing into the dirtiest place in Colorado.
As we’ve pointed out before, that’s nonsense; the vast dumping operation is simply the Cripple Creek Joint Venture’s Cresson mine. In the name of balance, the News quoted Cresson’s environmental manager, Philip Barnes, as saying it was all just rock. It followed that with a quote from Jeffrey Parsons of the Western Mining Action Project that disturbed rock is more likely to “cause environmental harm.”
Stuart Sanderson of the Colorado Mining Association tried to set this right in an op-ed submission to the News a week and a half later, pointing out that “there is no relation between a company’s rank on the [release inventory] and any risk of pollution or harm to the environment.” He told off the reporters — Burt Hubbard, Jerd Smith and Gabrielle Crist — for “sensationalism” and for “liberally quot[ing] anti-mining groups who contend, for example, that coal and hardrock mines throughout the state are responsible for the uncontrolled placement of toxic materials.”
We differ on one point: we don’t think it was sensationalism; we think it was just plain ignorance. There’s a lot of it going around, as young Zohner proved. The general journalist is among the hardest creatures on earth to educate out of its prejudices, and ill-informed tripe like this is the result. What’s to do?
As long as the mainstream press makes public opinion, its prejudices can’t be ignored. Politicians and policy-makers look to public opinion for many of their priorities. But over the past year or so, we are beginning to see some of the media statuary toppled. The New York Times lost an editor in the Jayson Blair fake-story scandal; Dan Rather’s credibility is a messy toxic spill after CBS News was taken in by forged memos purported to be from George W. Bush’s days in the Texas Air National Guard; the Guardian has become a national embarrassment in Britain. The lazier element of the press is having no end of a lesson, though it’s not clear yet whether the lesson has done it any good.
In the longer term, it should be possible for the mining industry to speak more directly to the public. If the industry crafts its message now, it will be ready for the day when reporters won’t have the ability to make mud like the Toxics Release Inventory stick.
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