As yet another study is released documenting the damaging health effects of breathing in toxic Ground Zero dust, it’s good to see corporate media outlets taking it seriously. (Most media outlets, anyway–the New York Post continues to give a platform to deniers.)
It’s worth remembering, though–since they won’t remind you–that for many months after 9/11, some outlets–the New York Times in particular–downplayed the fallout and mustered shockingly little journalistic skepticism of government reassurances about safety.
The attitude of Andrew Revkin, the Times‘ environmental reporter at the time, says it all. As I wrote in 2006:
The Times‘ Revkin told American Journalism Review (1â┚¬“2/03), “We were, I think, bending over backwards to be sure we were reporting a risk only if we knew it, whereas others, I feel rather strongly, were flipping it the other way.” Revkin cited the Daily News as an example. When asked how he thought the 9/11 health story would end, Revkin told AJR, “I think it’s going to fade away.”
Instead of acting as the watchdog it’s supposed to be, the New York Times reinforced misleading government claims that directly impacted the lives and health of thousands of New Yorkers. It’s an important history that you won’t hear about from the Times, which has never acknowledged or apologized for its reporting.
You can read that history in my article, “Gullibility Begins at Home: NYT Accepted False Reassurances on Ground Zero Safety” (Extra!, 11-12/06).
Julie, I think this is an important question:
What is the difference between corpress “gullability” and corpress duplicity?
Is there a gray area there? Does believing lies make one less culpable? I think about racism, and the difference between Ross Barnett (Mississippi governor in the ’60s) and George Wallace.
Barnett seemed to be a “true believer” in racial superiority, with insane theories going back to ancient Egypt. Wallace, as evidenced by his seeking of support from black voters years later, used racism for his own political ends, and may not have believed blacks were inferior to whites.
To me, there’s no real difference morally. Do you think there is regarding how mainstream media perceives the lies of our gummint?
For the record, and it’s perhaps more complex than this, but I really don’t think they’re taken in by these lies.
They can’t be that stupid.
Can they?
I find that most people have the ability to believe whatever it is in their interests to believe. And that requires less psychic energy than consciously lying–why bother doing that when it’s so much easier just to lie to yourself?
I agree that there’s not much moral difference between fooling yourself and merely fooling others; either way, you have an obligation not to spread damaging nonsense.
Julie here (again) conflates studies of exposure in workers and first responders — many without respirators — working day in and day out on “the pile” with assessments of the big-picture question of whether the public at large around lower Manhattan faced a health risk. Most of the stories I recall writing clearly discriminated between those two kinds of health questions. This book chapter I wrote, on the challenges of covering environmental issues, discusses the 9/11 coverage, one error I made, and the overall confidence I have in my approach at the time, and in retrospect.
http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2006/12/08/chapter.html
Andy,
That is a nice defense of this piece, but the main complaint stems from derision from your paper that there was no reason to believe the dust harmful to those outside of the cleanup, when several agencies clearly demonstrated tests that indicate the government was missing something in its analysis.
The point here is not that this recent study shows danger, but that the NYT didn’t do any research about why so many New Yorkers were concerned about the dust, even though said research should have been easy to do. Then, the NYT never apologized for calling these folks irrational for their concerns.
Julie isn’t conflating the workers study with the big picture of health risk: she is using the NYTs current response/concern in relation to earlier responses on the big picture health risk, which apparently, was real.
The American “exceptionalism” that lionizes ‘science’ (and our apparent dominance of things ‘scientific’) really comes into play, here. “(B)ending over backwards to be sure we were reporting a risk only if we knew it..” is, essentially, buying the status quo. What reportage is needed?.. and why bother to challenge ‘science’… and, especially “government science”? There’s probably no more need than was shown challenging “government intelligence” about WND in Iraq, etc.
The marvelous schizophrenia that scoffs at concerns about hormone-treated beef, hi-fructose corn syrup, and the “Precautionary Principle” that is sometimes portrayed as Europe’s excuse to deny American commerce- obviously being flaunted by reporters & their employers, in this case- will turn around and “raise concerns” about pharmaceuticals being sent to other countries and imported to the U.S. by the same corporations that prepare them for our own markets.
In the end it isn’t about ‘science’, at all… but about how much inconvenience ‘commerce’ is willing to brook, to achieve the believability (or “plausible deniability”) needed to conduct business as usual. Beneath the umbrella of that ‘commerce’ one will, obviously, find the New York Times. ^..^
Is anyone aware that there were tons of Asbestos in the World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on 9/11?
At that time the Port Authority had made a asbestos abatement claim against its insurers for more than One Billion dollars. That claim was well known in the London Reinsurance market, and that claim disappeared on 9/11. Where does anyone think all the asbestos went? Of course the air was toxic on that day.
I never hear anything about this in any news sources. Why? We hear about the claim for damages resulting from the destruction of the buildings, and all the litigation that resulted, but we never hear that some insurance underwriters actually made money that day.
I suppose it is just another example of the inadequacy of today’s media, and its ability, or lack thereof, of getting the relevant facts before the public.
Jim, no doubt they have the ability to mindfuck themselves, as do we all, and we have to ask why that occurs, don’t we?
These are reasonably intelligent persons, who can understand the contradictions in their actions. Yet they choose not to do so.
I think of my own evolution, growing up in the ’60s in Miss’ssippi. They were plenty of opportunities for me to ignore reality, but for whatever reasons, I didn’t.
I could see that what I was being taught in Sunday School didn’t jibe with the facts on the ground, and whether you want to attribute it to an awakening of my humanity, or just a finely honed guilt reflex (which, cutting myself some slack, I wouldn’t possess without the former), I just couldn’t accept the hypocrisy. And as time passed, I encountered intel that helped me suss why that hypocrisy existed.
So it’s not easy for me to understand how members of the corpress can simply ignore what’s in front of them. I’m not anything special, yet I could see the world for what it is. Why can’t they?
So I think they do, at least to some extent, but it’s in their (supposed) self-interest to pretend reality is something else. The suppression of incovenient facts would tend to support that, wouldn’t it?
And I say “supposed” because, in the end, everyone on this planet will pay for the sins of its elites, won’t they?
It’s a fool’s game, and maybe that’s the most accurate description of these people:
Utter, and ultimately self-destructive, fools.
What do you think?