Thursday, April 24, 2003 :::
 
The Very Worst Reporting Ever. Shortly after the anthrax attack slowed down, a sem-retired, once famous columnist for a Very Important Newspaper Decided to Find Out For Herself what the Bush administration was doing to protect the country against more such attacks. Having apparently done no more research than watch the evening news and read her own paper (which is notoriously weak in science coverage), she called up the bioterrorism task force at the Health and Human Services Department. After a few Piercing Questions, she concluded they were doing nothing. She of course missed the whole story. She had no compunction about painting the official as indifferent. He had in fact spent the previous two years in another office. And what was he doing in that other office?, she might have asked. Why, fighting bureaucatic inertia to use funds imposed on the department by pesky Congressional conservatives to establish bioterrorism units in all 50 states. It was this previous work which enabled us to fight off the anthrax attack with as little loss of life as occurred. Those new agencies even found a new way to treat inhalation anthrax, by the way. Of that,she said nothing. She grew indignant when she asked if there were plans to innoculate the entire population against small pox. Granted, the poor official had an unfortunate way of expressing himself: "Such an effort is not indicated at this moment," or some such government speak. What we have all learned since then--thanks in part to other reporters at this same newspaper--was the risk of such an attack is debatable, that there are constant reviews of what will happen should one occur, and, most importantly, that the small pox vaccine is itself extremely dangerous. There were several real stories, but she apparently had thought of one question, to which she was sure she already had the answer, and based on the response of this poor official who had made such a heroic effort, she wasted a whole lot of newsprint with her rant.

A Mind That Suits was reminded of this story this morning while reading a fairly unsatisfying front page story in the Journal this morning on why Americans are so obsessed with safety when we are the safest society in history. One hopes the Journal will use that as the basis for a longer series on this vexing question.



::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 9:15 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.