Regular readers of this blog know that I was quite upset by the recent spill of cyanide into Philadelphia’s water system. My initial horror at the early reports of a “fish kill” turned to anger when I found out that the spill involved cyanide. That anger turned to indignation when I learned that Merck, the pharmaceutical company responsible for the spill, did not notify government officials of it until a week after the incident.

After reading one Daily News article that minimized the issue, I compiled a list of questions that remained unanswered. Susie agreed that the investigation should not be left in the hands of an agency, and a federal administration, that had spent the last five years weakening our nation’s environmental laws. This was a local story that cried out for some old-fashioned muckraking.

As the weeks passed without further coverage, I wondered why the Inquirer didn’t seem to be actively investigating the story. Although I was tempted to write angry posts condemning the paper, I decided to do the responsible thing — to contact the paper in an effort to figure out what was going on.

Dan Rubin, an Inquirer journalist who writes eloquently about the Philadelphia blogosphere on Blinq, put me in touch with Carl Lavin, Deputy Managing Editor of the Inquirer. Carl very graciously agreed to an interview.

He was not able to answer all of the questions I asked. I can’t say I blame him; here is one of the questions he skipped:

It’s hard to blame him for passing on that one.

At any rate, I’m extremely grateful for the dialogue that Carl and I did end up having during the interview process. His responses below remind me, as a blogger, of the human realities in which journalists operate. And his willingness to take part in a dialogue affirmed my sense that bloggers and journalists can and should make better efforts to communicate with one another.

Matt: How does the Inquirer decide which stories are worth investigative, rather than factual or topical, reporting?

Carl Lavin: There are more than 400 journalists at the Inquirer, and we share a certain discipline and an approach to our jobs. Accuracy, fairness, curiosity, skepticism, context, story telling, relevance, impact on the lives of our readers and immediacy are all values we cherish. Each of us might have a slightly different list, but I think there is a consensus around those core values. We each bring to our jobs a wealth of experience, as journalists, but also as people — with histories, families, connections, and a full range of personal interests. Any good journalist tries to chase a story with an investigative zeal, if by investigative you mean that we want to do more than serve as stenographers to press agents and officials.

We want to avoid cynicism, but we don’t want to be passive about the flow of information we each face every day. We sift, we challenge, we triple check, we look for discrepancies, for holes. We also are aware of the people in each story — the people who are the decision makers and the people who read our paper, the ones who don’t have the time or ability to sate their own curiosity but who want to know what really happened. We can find the answers, trace how their tax money is spent, uncover the broken promises made by the officials who represent them, and point out ways that their world — our world — can be made better. We also celebrate success, capture drama and emotion, listen to the music of the soul and the poetry of the heart.

We tell stories. We help readers make sense of the tumult of the world. We tell the truth. We are limited in what we can do each day, each week. We always have ambitions that overshadow our resources. We make mistakes. We try to be efficient and to pick the paths that will lead to stories that illuminate powerful forces. We hit brick walls. We sometimes find the path is easier than we expected. Luck works both ways. We try through conversation, planning, training and experience to make it work for us as often as possible.

Do you, as an editor at the paper, see this as a story that warrants more investigation?

As an editor at this paper, I do want to know more about chemical spills in our watershed, and I want to know more about this specific spill.

In fact, Carl has informed me that the Inquirer will publish a new article on the spill in tomorrow’s paper. When I asked him whether that article stemmed, in any way, from our conversation, he replied that it had not — the paper’s environmental reporter had been working on it beforehand. But he added that “hearing from readers always helps us as we make decisions about news coverage.”

Let us, as readers of the paper, make sure that neither we, nor our local journalists, forget that.

UPDATE: Here is the story: Merck faces fines for June fish kill. It is not the investigative piece I had hoped it would be (I’m thinking Woodward and Bernstein here), but it’s a start, and I’m happy to see continuing coverage of the offiicial investigation.

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Note: please see update at bottom of post

I’m happy to see continuing coverage of the Merck cyanide spill in the Philly papers, but Sandra Shea’s article (if you can really call something that begins with the word “Eeeeew!” a legitimate act of journalism) raises more questions than it answers. Most of them center on the following paragraph:

In the case of the Merck release - which apparently happened June 13, though Merck didn’t discover it until a week later, after the fish-kill - authorities could tell something bad was happening not just because of the number of fish affected but because of the way the fish were acting: They were jumping out of the water and swimming upside down.

– “Agencies Downplay Water Mess”, Philadelphia Daily News, 6/26/06 [emphasis added]

Uh, hello? Are there any reporters in the house?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Un-fucking-believable. Via Philadelphia Will Do:

Ya think?

I would write more, but I’m kind of foaming at the mouth over this.

I’m not even angry; the foam’s just a by-product of the CYANIDE IN THE LOCAL WATER!

Previously:
We’re All Going to Die
The Clean Party

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Last week, Richard Cranium of the All-Spin Zone published an important piece called “Talking to the Reptile.” Building upon a post by Mark Sumner, Cranium argues that if Democrats want to win, they need to stop the high-minded rationalization and start talking to “the reptile in each of us, addressing our basic human needs.”

Cranium suggests that the environment is an issue that speaks to the brain stem, at least when it is framed not in terms of loggers and owls, but in terms of safe drinking water and pollution:

During a week in which a cyanide leak killed a thousand fish in Philly, only to be followed by the disgorging of 55,000 gallons of raw sewage into the city’s waters, Cranium’s advice seems smarter than ever. Democrats need to make an issue — a national issue — out of this, and they need to do it now.

The rational response to this is to argue that Philadelphia is a Democratic city run by a Democratic mayor; that Pennsylvania is run by a Democratic governor; and that such issues can’t possibly be used against the Republican party.

But that’s thinking with the head, not the reptilian brain. Americans know that the Bush administration has gutted the nation’s environmental laws. Now that we’re waking up to find feces-covered, three-headed fish in our waters, Democrats need to point out that this is what happens when Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House, and embark upon a systematic effort to pollute the environment.

It’s everywhere you look, whether your eyes are set upon Philly, New Orleans, or Iraq. Beyond that, environmental threats to our safety strike the same chord of fear in the medulla as the threat of terrorism.

The basic message is that Republicans are making our world unsafe for our children. It’s true, it’s scary, and it’s a winner.

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On the heels of the Philadelphia City Council’s new bill banning smoking in public workplaces, including bars and restaurants, people are freaking out. The percentage of Philly voters who identify themselves as libertarians has just increased tenfold.

My message to this prematurely wrinkled, scratchy-voiced contingent of would-be cons and wishful femme-fatales is simple: relax, people.

I left New York before the smoking ban took effect there, though I have returned since as both a smoker and a non-smoker. The truth is that once you get used to the idea, you hardly notice the ban: the smokers still smoke, only after taking fifteen steps out the door. The non-smokers still don’t smoke; they just smell better afterwards.

Despite my approval of the smoking ban, I do concede that some establishments lose an essential part of their identity when the clouds of smoke lift. One of my favorite bars in New York, for instance, Jimmy’s Corner — a midtown dive bar that is a haven for cast-outs from the boxing world — was never the same after the ban. It just felt too clean.

Philadelphia’s new law exempts “neighborhood bars” — defined as establishments that make more than 90% of their income from the sale of alcohol — from the ban. This, I think, is a great compromise — the places that make Philly the dirty town that it is will not lose their atmosphere. And while we’re sure to see a host of creative accounting changes in response to the law (burgers on the house!), it sounds like most bars in Philly will now be smoke-free.

The change will be painful for a lot of people. But, in the end, you’ve got to admit that a collection of over 4,000 chemicals, rolled up and sold to you by a group of unscrupulous crooks, is not worthy of your mournful tears.

Just huff some nicotine nasal spray along with me and we’ll all be fine.

UPDATE: My understanding is that “neighborhood bar” is defined by the percentage of money the bar makes on food vs. alcohol. At least ninety percent of the income has to come from alcohol for a bar to be exempt from the new regulations.

In fact, I think that the free burgers mentioned above might be one of the biggest, though most unintentional, effects of the law. I think we’ll see a fair number of bars stop selling food — or start giving it away for free — so that they can meet the exemption.

One thing they might do, if they want to keep smoking, is to offer lots of specials — like, “buy a beer for eight dollars and get a free burger and fries along with it!”

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All over Philly this morning, people are thinking: maybe that Gore fella really is onto something!

Authorities report that a “fish kill” — shorthand for a flotilla of snaggle-toothed, three-headed fish, floating belly-up — has been found in the water that winds its way through the city.

The Health Department advises us “not to swim, fish or boat” in the Schuylkill River, or in the Wissahickon Crick (which practically flows through my backyard) because of high levels of toxicity. “Just don’t touch the water” is how one official summed it up on WHYY.

We’re assured, however, that our drinking and bathing water is safe, even though the city thought it prudent to shut off forty percent of the city’s water supply. Just a precautionary measure. Everything is fine.

Coming off my prescient prediction that Argentina would win the World Cup — which the team quickly backed up with an utterly convincing 6-0 dismantling of Serbia this morning — I’ve begun to think that I may possess Nostradamus-like qualities.

And so, here is another startling prediction: you won’t have Philly to kick around much longer, America.

Screw the new smoking ban — might as well smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. The end is nigh!

Somewhere — perhaps on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. — a Dallas Cowboys fan is laughing.

Update: Well, they lifted the ban for the river, at least, but it remains in effect for Wissahickon Creek. They still don’t know what contaminant killed the fish, but whatever it was, it killed about 1,000 of them:

Lovely.

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Much of the liberal blogosphere has rightly excoriated the New York Times for its inability to deal honestly with the disgraceful legacy of Dame Judy.

But those aren’t the only lies the Times is peddling these days.

A recent article on stem cell research reinforced one of the biggest falsehoods propagated about the methods involved in such work.

The article, Codey Announces Change to Aid Stem Cell Research, lauds Acting New Jersey Governor Richard J. Codey for the creation of a state-sponsored public bank for umbilical and placental blood, which could be used for stem cell research.

In it, author Tina Kelley explains why cells obtained from umbilical cords and placental blood were less controversial than embryonic stem cells:

Can you find the white lie? It’s in that last sentence, which claims that the use of embryonic stems cells “entail[s] the destruction of an embryo.”

While I suppose that, on the most technical grounds, the sentence is true (since the harvesting of stem cells destroys an embryo), it’s also true that not using embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of an embryo.

In an article written for NOVA Online, Dr. Ronald M. Green explains the (pathetic) fallacy:

My first thought, upon reading the Times article, was that the white lie it presented was a small detail, and that my criticism of it was nit-picking. But really, when you get down to it, this claim is the entire ball game when it comes to objections to embryonic stem cell research. Stem cell research does not “entail” the destruction of embryos — fertility clinics do. The embryos, as Dr. Green points out, will be destroyed whether or not stem cells are harvested from them.

By erroneously suggesting that the embryos in question would not be destroyed if stem cells weren’t harvested from them, The New York Times once again pulled the wool over its readers’ eyes.

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This is why I have stopped eating hamburgers.

The New York Times reports that the FDA has proposed new rules on animal feed:

“What?!” you say, half-chewed nuggets of ground beef falling from your lips. “There are digested brains and spinal cords in my Big Mac?”

Well, yes. But wait — there’s more:

Eyes? Tonsils? Intestines? Nerves? Droppings? Put that on a bun and eat it — if you haven’t already.

None of this is news if you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s excellent Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. In that book, Schlosser exposes everything you never wanted to know about the fast food industry, and were afraid to ask.

A constant theme running throughout Schlosser’s book is that the fast food industry and its Washington lobbyists have succeeded in gutting or removing many safety regulations in the United States.

If you’re wondering who, in their right mind, would sanction the feeding of animal brains, guts, and turds to animals whose stomachs were made to digest grass, or why they would want to do so, the Times article provides the answer:

It’s all about the profit margin. Never mind the health of the American consumer. And never mind accountability — since Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human form of mad cow disease) can have an incubation period of up to thirty years, none of the people making these decisions will have to face the consequences of their actions. Instead, like the massive national debt that Bush has piled up, this burden will fall on our children, and our children’s children.

Deregulation has long been a central platform of the Republican party — conservatives argue that private industry suffers when the government imposes rules upon it. But the FDA’s latest attempt to regulate the meatpacking industry in the face of a potential public health crisis reminds us that, left to themselves, businesses will always take the easiest path, regardless of the human consequences.

If you’re surprised by the current Bush administration’s blatant cronyism, and tendency to put the fox in charge of the henhouse, you shouldn’t be — as Schlosser notes, it’s a longstanding Republican practice:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. What most unites George W. Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees are their connections to corporations — John Roberts’ long list of corporate clients included the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and The Dallas Morning News calls Harriet Miers “the quintessential corporate lawyer.”

Like FloridaExGOP, I think the underlying message of both nominations is “It’s corporate rights, stupid.”

If these two nominees turn out to be Bush’s most longstanding legacy, we can look forward to a continued agenda of corporate deregulation.

And if I ever return to Burger King, which encourages customers to “Have it Your Way,” I’ll be sure to ask them to hold the tonsils and eyeballs.

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A few weeks ago, The National Enquirer printed a story which claimed that President Bush had begun drinking again. I declined to report on that story at the time, only partly because I was concerned about its source.

While most of the blogs that helped publicize the story were careful to point out that it was only rumor (and that the NE has a history of picking up on true stories before the MSM would touch them), there was something about it that bothered me.

I realized what it was when I got the following message from a friend, who was responding to this article. He has given me permission to post it here:

I’ve wished, many times, that President Bush could feel a tenth of the suffering that his political choices have inflicted on soldiers injured in this misguided war of choice; on the parents and families of soldiers killed in action; on the men, women, and children left stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina; or on countless others, at home and abroad.

But I think that the message above makes an important point: while it’s fine to wish political destruction on President Bush, personal destruction is an entirely different story — especially while he’s still behind the figurative wheel of the nation.

My question for you is this: should there be limits on the ills we wish on our political enemies? Can a political leader do so much damage to other lives that wishing the same on them can be justified? Has political dialogue in this country deteriorated to the point that the answers to those questions no longer matter?

I would ask these questions of both liberals and conservatives — as Bush himself or his Swift-Boat friends could testify, this type of mud-slinging is not at all limited to the left side of the aisle.

Update: Something tells me that Hunter would not agree with this post.

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Rick Bowmer/AP

Some will see these photographs as an exploitation of tragedy; others will see them as unduly macabre;

and some will recognize that only when we are willing to look at what our nation has wrought can it be saved, if it still can be saved.

Found via Talk Left and Pam’s House Blend, they are graphic and disturbing. Click on them at your own risk:

Ogrish.com: Pictures of the New Orleans dead 1
Ogrish.com: Pictures of the New Orleans dead 2
Stern.de Photographs of New Orleans

Avoid them at your nation’s risk.

In an essay that appeared in an 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War dead — the first wartime photographs that brought the reality of war to American breakfast tables. Holmes wrote:

We cannot allow the dead of New Orleans to be locked in a secret drawer or buried in the recesses of our cabinet. Not if we want our republic to rise from its knees and live again. Not while these people hold the reins of power.

There are too many stories yet to be told. We need to hear them. We need to see them.

But even that is not enough.

Clearly, the federal officials purportedly in charge of the disaster recovery efforts bear the heaviest burden for these deaths. The President who appointed them, and those who continue to support him, have revealed themselves for the callous, inhumane, immoral creatures that they are.

But I can’t help feeling that we are part of the problem, too. By continuing to participate in this corrupt and morally bankrupt society, we all bear some measure of the burden.

We live in a country whose President openly wonders “what didn’t go right?” as FEMA orders 25,000 body bags.

He will never know, because he will never face these dead.

But we can, and we must.

The last five posts I’ve written, and then deleted, have all been titled “What’s the Point?” In the face of our failed efforts to make a change before this disaster, I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question, but the one thing I do know is that everything is different now. After Katrina, things cannot continue to go on as they did before. Something has to change. Everything has to change.

We need action. We need to open the doors of this cabinet of horrors, this grotesque nation of repulsive privilege and old bigotry.

We need a revolution.

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