Presswatch/The Deep Six
Eastland, Terry
T ime to review the bulging files of this presswatcher, and what do I find? Lots of stories that have been underplayed, misplayed, curiously played, or not played at all. The Big Six among...
...If so, the impact of reregulation ought to lead the press to the unreported story of the zero-growth economy...
...The piece reported that the EPA was reviewing the risks of dioxin, since exposure to the chemical was "now considered by some experts to be no more risky than spending a week sunbathing...
...Rule-making in the Federal Register reached 67,000 pages in 1991, up from 55,000 in 1988...
...After all, for more than a decade all kinds of media have told us of the Apocalypse Awaiting: "Scourge from the Skies" (Reader's Digest), "Acid from, the Skies" (Time), and "Rain of Terror" (Field and Stream...
...Edward B. McLean, Department of Political Science, Wabash College Freedom and the Law is widely regarded as one of the most cogent introductions to the role of law in a free society: Including the analogy between the market economy and law, and the contrast between legislation and law...
...Louis Post-Dispatch reported the news in a front-page story under a banner headline...
...In January 1991, reporting on the lack of reporting on the NAPAP study, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's press writer, asked Post environmental writer Michael Weisskopf why the paper had ignored it...
...Officials Say Dangers of Dioxin Exaggerated...
...This report was widely but badly covered, as the press ignored the first two points to emphasize the need for "action now...
...His story also drew some national attention, as the "Today" show, NBC News, the Washington Post, and the New York Times did pieces?Amazing, when you consider that race-norming had been around for ten years, having been set in motion under Carter and implemented by the ostensibly anti-quota Reagan Administration...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
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...and that, "despite the great uncertainties, greenhouse warming is a potential threat sufficient to justify action now...
...Vernon Houk of the Centers for Disease Control, publicly acknowledged that the science he thought supported his conclusion was faulty...
...A less aggressive understanding of journalism one cannot imagine: "He said many people involved in the acid rain debate told him it had little news value...
...The round of news stories emboldened an administration publicly opposed to quotas to place the Labor policy under "review...
...obviously, the flag on the flagship must be saluted...
...The second study, in September, observed that the economy could adapt and even benefit from a gradual warming...
...The St...
...Maybe now the story will reach the daily press...
...Nor has the press paid much attention to the ill effects of the budget pact upon the economy...
...Houk is right and dioxin is much less dangerous than had been determined, that could mean the Government's regulations for other compounds will need to be adjusted...
...ABC News gave it a mention, but that was about it—until August 15, when the New York Times published an excellent front-page story (with sidebar it came to sixty-five column inches) by Keith Schneider, "U.S...
...260 + xiv pages...
...The word now is that Darman wants to hold another "bipartisan budget summit" in 1993...
...His insights into the danger to the rule of law in a collectivist age, no doubt, provided the foundation for most contemporary thought that urges the value and need for a restoration of the rule of law...
...ring: the deficit for FY 1991 came in at $268.7 billion, and Darman's office projects the deficit for FY 1992 to roll in at $348.3 billion...
...All they need is a Bob Holland or Peter Brown who would write them...
...Although the NAPAP study involved 700 of the nation's leading scientists and cost $500 million, its politically untenable findings explain why it got almost no notice in the press, apart from a segment on CBS's "60 Minutes...
...Also of "little news value," apparently, was the effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to discredit the work of one of the principal contributors to the NAPAP study, a soil scientist named Edward Krug...
...Here is a story begging for big-time reporting—the bad science informing so many EPA regulations...
...This expanded edition includes four-lectures published here for the first time...
...In October, an administration urged on by the press (and Darman) cut a budget deal that would supposedly reduce the deficit by $482 billion over five years...
...Foreword, index...
...Acid Rain In 1980 Congress created the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) to determine the truth about acid rain...
...Under Bush, however, the trend has been reversed...
...Nor have reporters fed on Dick Darman (perhaps because they feed from him...
...Department J112 7440 North Shadeland Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46250 Quantiry Ordered Title Edition Price Amount Paperback $ 5.00 Hardcover $12.00 The American Spectator February 1992 47...
...The lack of coverage illustrates not only how poorly the press covers the bureaucracy but also how incurious it is about the instrumentalities by which government makes employers count and hire by race...
...In 1982, the federal government 46 The American Spectator February 1992 permanently evacuated all 2,240 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, whose soil showed traces of dioxin...
...The Big Six among them: The Deficit In his annual mid-year fiscal review in 1990, budget director Richard G. Darman projected that the deficit for Fiscal Year 1991 would be $231 billion—the biggest ever, in dollar terms...
...Darman is also part of the story, having allowed Congress to neutralize his Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which during the Reagan years proved an effective check upon the regulatory tendencies of executive agencies by insisting on a cost-benefit analysis...
...Holland deserves a Pulitzer...
...EPA Administrator William Reilly calls that law "the environmental flagship of this administration...
...instead, the focus has often been on how the budget deal has too severely conThe American Spectator February 1992 45 strained the spending appetite ("The Law That Ate the Future," editorialized the New York Times...
...As the Times reported, "If Dr...
...But there's been no hue and cry in the press, as there was in 1990, over all the awful things the deficit is supposed to do to the economy, ("Deficitology," "The Coming Budget Disaster," "Yes to Taxes," opined the Washington Post in 1990...
...The piece caused a public outcry throughout the state, leading the employment commission to drop the GATBE...
...When House Republicans early last year pushed to include a measure outlawing race-norming in the new "civil rights" bill, no Democrat dared defend the practice...
...John Sununu got front-page news for his travel, but Darman goes unnoticed despite an economic ,forecasting record unmatched for its sheer magnitude of error...
...But don't expect any follow-up on the damage new taxes will cause the economy...
...Its deadly reputation derived from its ability, even in very small doses, to cause cancer in laboratory animals...
...That's $70 billion more than projected when President Bush signed the "deficit reduction" package...
...The press has duly reported that the budget pact hasn't succeeded on its own terms and, given the various explanations, such as the extra costs of public assistance and the S&L bailout...
...The Virginia Employment Commission administered the race-normed GATBE to job seekers and reported results to would-be employers, many of whom were under legal pressures to hire and promote by race...
...Foreword and preface to the 1st Edition, introduction, appendix, index...
...Assuming Darman—and Bush—are still around, expect the budget again to become a big deal in the press—so long as higher taxes are the likely outcome...
...Big news, you would think, but only the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times saw fit to cover it...
...The press did a good job covering deregulation, begun during the Carter presidency and continued under Reagan, which by 1988 had cut the amount of annual rule-making by almost 40 percent from 1981 levels...
...It was the late Warren Brookes who first spotted the story of reregulation, but not until December 1991, when the National Journal made "The Regulatory President" a cover story, did a news organization devote substantial coverage to it...
...Enclosed is my check or money order made payable to Liberty Fund, Inc...
...But last April, the government official who originally recommended the evacuation, Dr...
...Not until the spring was the EPA questioned by anyone in the press about its campaign against Krug, whose work effectively calls into question certain provisions of the Clean Air Act...
...Reregulation...
...1, "the most potent carcinogen ever tested...
...This fall I was sent documents—evidently from a conservative whistleblower at the EPA—indicating the agency's efforts to hire and promote by quota...
...In the fall of 1990, NAPAP reported its conclusion, namely that acid rain has caused far less damage to the nation's forests and lakes than was previously estimated...
...dollars...
...Only Peter Brown of Scripps Howard, author of Minority Party: Why Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond, devoted much attention to the subject...
...Most of all, however, noncoverage comes down to the journalistic profession's being in basic sympathy with employment preferences...
...that none of the climate models used to predict the greenhouse effect provides a "reliable forecast...
...Global Warming The National Academy of Sciences issued two reports on this subject last year...
...Robert Nisbet, author of The Quest for Community 100 + xviii pages...
...Dioxin For years the chemical compound dioxin was Toxic Enemy No...
...In January the EPA put out word that Krug is "on the fringes of environmental science and policy making," and that he has "limited scientific credibility even in the limited area of surface water acidification...
...Holland came across the story locally...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...The mix of Labor review and Democratic unwillingness to support race-norming caught the press unprepared...
...Hardcover $12.00 Paperback $ 5.00 Please send me: 0-86597-096-3 0-86597-097-1 LibertyPress, 1991 0-86597-084-x 0-86597-085-8 LibertyClassics, 1990 Freedom and Hardcover $20.00 the Law Paperback $ 7.50 The Ethics of Redistribution Subtotal Indiana residents add 5% sales tax Total Prepayment required on all orders not for resale...
...There are countless similar stories out there in governmentland...
...Name Address City State/Zip Mail to: LIBERTY FUND, INC...
...Hardcover $20.00 Paperback $ 7.50 THE ETHICS OF REDISTRIBUTION By Bertrand de Jouvenel Introduction by John Gray "Only Hayek has rivaled Bertrand de Jouvenel in demonstrating why redistributionism in the democracies inexorably results in the atrophy of personal responsibility and the hypertrophy of bureaucracy and the centralized state instead of in relief to the hapless minorities It is pledged to serve...
...Holland did so on the editorial pages of his newspaper, after getting hold of the conversion tables by which a black applicant for a blue-collar job is awarded a percentile score of 87, a Hispanic 74, a white 47, and an Asian 47—four separate scores for the same number of right answers...
...watch for a revised (upward) figure soon...
...NEW FREEDOM AND THE LAW EXPANDED THIRD EDITION By Bruno Leoni Foreword by Arthur Kemp "There are few seminal works as important to the current discussion of the rule of law as that of Bruno Leoni...
...the nearby Syntex Corporation was blamed, and in 1990 it agreed to spend as much as $200 million over the next decade to clean up the mess...
...Instead, the opposite is occurTerry Eastland is resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...
...Race-Norming On May 30, 1990, Robert Holland of the Richmond Times-Dispatch became the first journalist I've come across to write about the Labor Department's practice of racially rigging the results of the General Aptitude Test Battery Examination (GATBE), a test taken by 600,000 people annually in thirty states...
...Please send me a copy of your current catalogue...
...We've had one for three years now, longer than any period since the Depression...
...The first, in April, said that there is no evidence that global warming is anything but the natural variability of the temperature cycles...
Vol. 25 • February 1992 • No. 2
