[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: Smoke — or something — gets in their eyes

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Posted by The Night Writer:
Smoke — or something — gets in their eyes
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1191462352.shtml


   In this week's [1]Tuesday Morning Quarterback on ESPN.com, Gregg
   Easterbrook (no fan of George W. Bush) writes:

     Exaggerating the Case Against Bush Only Lessens the Focus on His
     Real Faults:
     There's a lot to dislike about the George W. Bush administration --
     the Iraq war, lack of action on petroleum waste, wiretapping -- but
     in the rush to make Bush seem as bad as possible, the establishment
     media consistently have distorted his domestic environmental
     record, which is basically fine. Air, water and toxic pollution
     have declined since Bush took office; all U.S. environmental
     indicators except greenhouse gas emissions have been positive for
     20 to 30 years, which you'd never know from opening the morning
     newspaper.
     A problem is that environmental journalists are genetically
     programmed to spin all stories as bad news while ignoring progress.
     A classic example is stories expressing horror and outrage that
     environmental prosecutions initiated by the EPA or filed by the
     Justice Department are declining, as they have been since the
     middle of the Clinton administration. But it's good that
     environmental prosecutions are declining -- the reason is that
     pollution is declining! As pollution declines, there are fewer
     violations to prosecute. If speeding declined, police would write
     fewer tickets: Would we be glad speeding was declining or express
     horror over the shocking, shocking reduction in prosecution of
     speeders?
     There the canard was again as the Sunday lead-headline story of The
     Washington Post: "The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of
     criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the
     Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new
     investigations and total convictions all down by more than a
     third," the story began. Of course environmental prosecution is
     declining, there is less to prosecute every year! The Post's banner
     story ran 38 paragraphs but never mentioned that all forms of
     pollution except greenhouse gases are declining, and because
     greenhouse-gas emissions are legal, there's nothing to prosecute.
     Mention that pollution is in long-term decline, and Sunday's
     front-page banner story in The Washington Post goes "poof."

References

   1. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/071002&sportCat=nfl