Crappy Environmental Reporting

Journalists talk frequently of burying the lede--of failing to begin a story with the actual news or point being conveyed. Here's a nice example of that from a recent Cincinnati Enquirer story that proclaims "Ohio's waters more polluted" and opens with this definitive statement:

More Ohio waterways are imperiled by pollution than two years ago, and only one river in the state meets federal clean water standards for swimming, fishing, boating and other recreational uses.

In the fourth paragraph comes this useful bit of information:

Linda Oros, spokeswoman for the Ohio EPA, said this year's report is worse because the analysis is tougher. Previous reports, she said, did not account for bacteria levels from sewage, or advisories against eating too much fish from polluted waterways.

So the real news is that the EPA is using a different type of analysis and issuing a different set of advisories. As Reason's Ron Bailey showed in a recent piece about the coverage of the latest salmon-PCB scare, it always pays to read news reports about pollution and the environment past the sensational, scare-mongering headlines.

Comments

[PapayaSF]

And doesn't the same thing happen with reporting on poverty? Continually redefine "poverty" upward so that there's always a nice substantial percentage of the population that can be called "poor," even if many are living at a level that would have been considered "middle class" a few generations ago.

[kevrob]

Would this make anyone happy:

OH WATERS PASS OLD STANDARDS, FAIL NEW

The watermelons would never want to admit that the old standards had ever been met.

One must admit that sometimes you have to change standards, if there is new science that shows some substance as being more toxic than we hd previously thought. I have seen it claimed that stricter standards are often the artifact of new abilities to detect pollutants in smaller and smaller concentrations.

Kevin

[Will Spencer]

Steven Milloy over at http://www.junkscience.com/ does a good job of beating this sort of fake science down every day.

[Jean Bart]

Will Spencer,

The science behind the reportage is not "fake science"; of course the reporting of that science may be bad, but that's not an indication that the science itself is "fake" or "bad" or otherwise untrustworthy.

[Dan]

Jean Bart,
Good point. As usual, it's the journalism that is untrustworthy.

[Will]

Yeah... that is sloppy. The writer could have lead in with something about the waterways being worse than anyone thought they were... which to me is perhaps even more shocking.

This sort of sloppy journalism just opens up the gates for eco-bashers and junk-science fans... it's a shame.

[Nick B]

But how would a story about tougher enviromental standards make the front page?

[Overlord]

"Eco-basher!"
That wonderful buzzword - "Basher". What a great way to silence your critics. Anyone who criticizes you or your cause, no matter how accurate and reasoned their arguments, is labeled a "Basher". No need to disprove their critiques, just call them names and shout them down. "Gay Basher!" "Conservative Basher!"
"Christian Basher!" Woman Basher!"
Whatever happened to reasoned and honest debate?

[gene]

Overlord has confused me. What does your posting say??? Does not fit the article nor the other postings.

[Hudson]

File this one under really dumb posts by otherwise smart people. You really ought to get out from the cubicle farm once in a while.

It doesn't actually pay to read most news reports about environmental problems to the end. You won't get the story from a 1,000-word story, no matter what side you're on. That's because the reporters don't understand the issues, and the publishers won't let them print it even if they do.

Anyone who seriously thinks that as a rule, environmental problems are overreported and exaggerated is spending way too much time staring at screens.

If you want to know the full extent of the harm done in a given case or region, the sad fact is you had better read the entire docket for a given case, industry, or controversy. But there are only about two reporters in the country who will do truly their homework on these issues.

I'd also like to say here that it's a shame that those who style themselves Libertarians, but are constantly whining about environmental regulations being too strict, ought to go back and re-read your Hayek.

If you're being honest with yourself, you may just find that the god of your movement is much less hostile to such regulation than you think.

[Don]

Good point Highway.

[joe]

So this is sort of like saying that CAFE standards have made cars less safe, even though cars built since the adoption of CAFE are more safe than they were before CAFE. It's about someone moving the finish line mid-race.

[Don]

No Joe. It is simply not true that "Ohio's waters are more polluted". And, as Highway points out, stricter federal guidelines on the environment may not result in environmental improvements. CAFE regulations, on the other hand, constrain the safety of automobiles. If someone says that new cars are more dangerous than old ones, that would be untrue, but absent CAFE, our cars would be safer than they are today.

[Jason Ligon]

"It doesn't actually pay to read most news reports about environmental problems to the end. You won't get the story from a 1,000-word story, no matter what side you're on. That's because the reporters don't understand the issues, and the publishers won't let them print it even if they do."

Interesting take. So should we ignore all environmental reporting or just assume that whatever the Union of Concerned Leftists is the truth? Shouldn't a call for regulation be held to the standard that there is an actual harm?

[rst]

Unfortunately Hudson people take this silly shit to heart...scientifically void journalism spreads its component nonsense like a virus.

[mak_nas]

If you're being honest with yourself, you may just find that the god of your movement is much less hostile to such regulation than you think.

i'm a firm believer that everything is relative, and i find myself to be most libertarian on issues where i feel the course of regulation has simply gone much too far -- and i subsequently find myself to be very libertarian on environmentalism. (and, for contrast, i'm much less so when it comes to financial deriviatives.)

has the world changed as a result of man's activities? obviously. should we therefore attempt to reverse all those changes? many greens sincerely seem to believe 'yes' -- but i find that an abjectly silly and counterproductive notion.

i feel environmental regulation has done some very positive things -- the river that runs outside my office, for example, is no longer in any danger of catching fire. but the concept of diminishing returns has caught up to tougher green laws, imo. our environmnet is plainly far, far healthier for us than it was in 1974 or 1904 -- and that's good enough for me. hyperregulating now to scour the nth degree of evidence of man's very existence from the world makes little sense, imo.

[Kai]

I think environmental issues suffer from a lack of understanding of risk combined with a widespread ignorance regarding environmental threats. In an ideal world, we would closely scrutinize that marginal dollar of sociatal benefit and determine the most cost-beneficial use. We wouldn't shoot money down holes trying to address scary sounding chemicals that provide far less risk than crossing the street.
There is indeed a diminishing return to environmental regulation.

[jack Wayne]

mak nas makes the argument that is the most sensible to me. The environmentalists have never said what the end point is. I.E., when is clean clean enough? As far as I know, no one has ever indicated at what point the environment is essentially clean. Therefore, we can continuously keep stating higher and higher standards and end up with a world that is "cleaner" than when Man first evolved.

[Highway]

There's also the issue that previous regulations have to have time to work. Especially ones that deal with clean water. I know that in one of my fields, stormwater runoff management, the regulations have been tightened and tightened again (although they look to be stable for the forseeable future), but they don't actually have any effect until projects are built under the new regulations. There are very few regulations that are retro-active. Therefore, making them too tough has an opposite effect, making new projects too expensive, and leaving the old conditions in place, which are always more polluting than the new ones (this is a common theme in Reason articles).

As we build new projects, it cleans up the sources of the pollution, but that doesn't really show up in streams for a couple of years, as the pollutants that have previously been deposited are finally washed through the system. And frequently, regulations are tested too soon, and found lacking even though they haven't had enough time or projects under their purview to have a meaningful effect. So the regulations are made tougher, which further delays new projects, further delaying the improvements to the environment, and opening the door for scary reporting. But we don't hear many stories about regulations back-firing like that.

[AJMB]

I liked Heinlein's idea: Anybody can use water from a given municipalityprovide their outflow is upstream from their inflow. Cleaning up the spillage becomes enlightened self interest.

[Mark]

"CAFE regulations, on the other hand, constrain the safety of automobiles. If someone says that new cars are more dangerous than old ones, that would be untrue, but absent CAFE, our cars would be safer than they are today."

Don--How, precisely, have CAFE standards constrained the safety of automobiles. Please be specific--identify specific safety improvements that the CAFE standards have made illegal, and the specific legal provisions of the standards that make them illegal. I'm very curious.

[Mark]

"And doesn't the same thing happen with reporting on poverty? Continually redefine "poverty" upward so that there's always a nice substantial percentage of the population that can be called "poor," even if many are living at a level that would have been considered "middle class" a few generations ago."

No, actually the official standards for poverty levels have not been significantly revised for several decades, and, in fact, many people who do research in the field think the standards are too narrow--that many people who are above the "official" poverty line should be considered as poor.

[Mark]

By the way, isn't there a bit of irony, to say the least, to cite Ron Bailey as an example of responsible reporting on the environment?

[joe]

AJMB, you run into the problem of, say, rental property owners who don't give a damn if their tenants are drinking dirty water. "But that would lower the rents he could collect." In a tight housing market (and all housing markets are tight for poor people), people take whatever they can get into. And there is plenty of money to made jamming lots of people into low-rent buildings.