Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Shafted

I've been in Florida visiting family for the last several days. Driving back last night, I was listening to ATC. Michele Norris talked to Walter Arabasz, director of seismograph stations for University of Utah. It was pretty informative and gave the lie to the anti-union mine owner, Murray, who insisted that his mine disaster was caused by "earthquakes." Arabasz made it clear that scientific evidence points toward a mine collapse having nothing to do with seismic activity. NPR gave Murray plenty of airtime to give his obviously self-interested point of view.

So this morning I about choked to hear the headlines state that continuing seismic activity caused more collapsing in the mine. The follow-up story featured, guess who, mine owner, Murray again giving his completely unscientific assertion that earthquakes caused the secondary collapse. It was mentioned that "some seismologists" think the collapse caused seismic readings, but the thrust of the piece and all the airtime was aimed at reinforcing the mine owners assertions.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I heard this too and had to switch off. The owner was given loads of time to blame everyone else for the disaster, without anyone challenging him. The on-the-scene reporter just said she felt "uncomfortable" by the owner's aggressiveness toward the media. This about put me straight into the Order of the Shrill. What business do you have being a reporter if you are such a shrinking violet you can't even challenge a person when they're being so self-serving. The owner denied the miners were doing "retreat mining", a highly dangerous practice designed to get out the last penny's worth of coal. MSHA today asserts that's exactly what they were doing. Also, as it happens, mine collapses are far more often the source of seismic activity than the other way around. But in this age of utter fealty to business, the media just won't do its job and point this out. Effin' stenographers and lapdogs!

Anonymous said...

Them's our mainstream media wannabees, (holds nose to mimic the tone) National... Public ... McRadio.

I just recalled newshounds.com's byline in my mind:

"We watch Fox so you don't have to."

Oh, how easy it is for this site to repurpose that one toward our own pet pariah.