Re: Journalism -- Pro and anti

[js_dukelow@ccmail.pnl.gov (James S Jr Dukelow)]

The San Francisco Examiner article on radon has also appeared recently 
in other newspapers.  It is written by Cassandra Chrones Moore, an 
adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, an organization about as 
ideologically neutral as Greenpeace.  Her article is a fairly 
straight-forward review of the history of the radon issue.  She does 
forget to mention one reason we have such a serious EPA/radon problem.

Early on in the Reagan years, the Gipper almost got laughed out of town 
when he blamed air pollution on terpene emissions from pine trees.  Thus 
primed, when Stanley Watras set off the rad alarms when he arrived at 
work at the Limerick plant in 1984, the Reagan EPA was ready/eager to 
launch a full-court press against a serious environmental problem that 
couldn't possibly ever be blamed on business or industry.

Or, perhaps I'm just an old cynic.

Regarding the Detroit Free Press article on the Cassini mission and the 
Pu-238 RTGs:  It is a pretty standard "quote the quacks on both sides of 
the issue" article, written by a couple of journalists, Martin Merzer and 
Phil Long, who don't appear to understand much about the subject of the 
article and don't appear to care very much whether their readers 
understand the issues.  At the end of the article is the note, "Assistant 
Nation/World Editor Peter Gavrilovich, who edited this story, can be 
reached at 1-313-222-5949".  Merzer and Long both appear to be general 
reporters (i.e., no scientific background) for the Miami Herald.  There's 
a good chance the article will appear, or has appeared, in some of the 
other two or three dozen K-R newspapers.  Merzer won the Jesse Lavanthol 
Prize for deadline reporting for a story (a year or so ago) about the 
hijacking of a school bus carrying disabled children.  As a side note, 
the Detroit FreePress version of the story did not mention the 17 kCi of 
Pu-238 put into the atmosphere when an RTG burned up on reentry in 1964.  
Perhaps Gavrilovich edited that out of the Merzer/Long story.

Best regards.

Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 
Richland, WA

js_dukelow@pnl.gov

These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my 
management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.