Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger are about to pick up some well deserved hardware for their series on bisphenol A (BPA) – a plastic hardener that leaches from plastic when microwaved. The substance causes neurological and developmental hazards, but it is ubiquitous in food storage containers, including water bottles and baby bottles. Rust and Kissinger’s 2007-08 reporting on the problem, and the FDA’s eagerness to overlook it, ignited public controversy, causing FDA to reconsider a decision to take a pass on regulating BPA. In fact, FDA has promised an update on the issue this week.
In April, Rust and Kissinger will receive one of journalism’s highest honors for the series, the George Polk Award from Long Island University. The series has already been awarded the 2008 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
The headlines of their stories, under the banner, “Chemical Fallout,” tell the tale:
The series really was uncommonly enterprising, all the more impressive because of the general state of reporting these days. Many of today's reporters say they were attracted to journalism by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s relentless pursuit of the Watergate story. But so often news coverage goes not much deeper than a press release and a snappy quote. And if the press release is from a government agency, dense and officious, it's all the more likely to be accepted uncritically, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That's partly because newsroom resources are so thin that reporters don't have time to really dig in on a story, particularly complicated stories about the environment. But it's also because too many reporters mistake cynicism for healthy skepticism. It's one thing to go on a cable gabfest and snark about the failings of politicians and government. It's quite another to go out and get the story.
In this series, Kissinger and Rust showed themselves to be story-getters, and their work reminds us of what reporting can be when practiced by committed and capable professionals, with institutional support. Congratulations to them and to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for printing their work.
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Matthew Freeman | February 23, 2009
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger are about to pick up some well deserved hardware for their series on bisphenol A (BPA) – a plastic hardener that leaches from plastic when microwaved. The substance causes neurological and developmental hazards, but it is ubiquitous in food storage containers, including water bottles and baby bottles. […]
James Goodwin | February 20, 2009
In recent weeks, an unusual convergence of events has served to elevate somewhat the public profile of cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Before then, CBA was an obscure and highly complex tool of policy analysis—the kind of thing that hardcore policy wonks would wonk about when the subjects of their usual policy wonkery weren’t wonkish enough. Foreseeable […]
Holly Doremus | February 19, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet, “the Environment, Law and Policy Blog.” New EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has granted the Sierra Club’s petition to reconsider a memorandum issued by outgoing Administrator Stephen Johnson in December. Almost two years after the Supreme Court declared, in Massachusetts v. EPA, that CO2 is […]
Matthew Freeman | February 19, 2009
CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendelson has a piece today in The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” feature on the news that EPA is working its way toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. As The Times quite directly and correctly puts it, “Under orders from the Supreme Court, which the Bush […]
Matthew Freeman | February 18, 2009
Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of […]
Shana Campbell Jones | February 17, 2009
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: climate change is different from traditional environmental problems. It’s global, for one thing. Carbon dioxide isn’t a traditional pollutant, for another. It doesn’t cause cancer. It doesn’t kill fish. Plants use it in photosynthesis; every human and animal emits it. The problem is that combustion creates […]
Matthew Freeman | February 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the last of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]
Matthew Freeman | February 13, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the third of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]
Yee Huang | February 12, 2009
From the airspace over the Indonesian gold mine Batu Hijau, it might seem as though the mythical King Midas has been resurrected in a modern, and twisted, form. Where King Midas of Greek lore was granted the touch of gold, the modern King Midas assumes the form of a global mining company that, in a […]