Every journalist fears getting the story wrong -- not just an inaccuracy, but burying or missing an important point. Of course, the way to reduce that concern is to always talk to the harshest critics of any perspective portrayed in your story. That's how you get it airtight.
Talking to any critics at all would have been a huge step up for AP reporter Jennifer Loven's recent article on a speech President Bush gave about alternative fuels in North Carolina today. For anyone wondering just what the deal is with the Prez Sez links on our front page, this is a perfect example. Rather than doing a story about alterative fuels that included expert sources with varying opinions, this article is just Bush quotes and paraphrases interspersed with contextual narrative that serves to uphold Bush's stance and lend an air of expertise to his rhetoric.
In stumping for alternative fuels, Bush touted the energy-producing potential of pig manure piling up and spilling over at factory farms (no, he didn't put it that way, and neither did the AP). It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that Bush is promoting the potential of pig-poop power in North Carolina. As we learned the day before, the ingenious folks at Smithfield have found a new way to squeeze profit out of their ecological horror shows they call CAFOs (confined animal feed operations).
You wouldn't know it from that AP story, nor from any other recent corporate articles devoted to singing the praises of hog power, but some people think the idea downright stinks. These marginalized sources that corporate reporters apparently don't want to consult say CAFOs create more environmental problems than they could ever hope to solve by fueling cars or illuminating lightbulbs. It turns out, the crap "lagoons" that profit-minded corporations want to mine for methane fuel are little ecological disasters.
Worse yet, on Feb. 19, the AP ran a gushing assessment of Smithfield's poop-to-power program, disguised as a hard-news piece. This article did, to its credit, include an environmental assessment, though you might be a little disappointed in it.
"From an environmental standpoint, this program makes good sense because we're providing a renewable energy source and, by capturing the methane gas, we're lowering greenhouse gas emissions," Hunt said.
Hunt, by the way, is one R.C. Hunt, president of the North Carolina Pork Council and a contract hog producer.
Maybe I'm being unfair, you might say. Reporters have deadlines, pressures; they can't cover every angle in every story. Maybe the AP just didn't know about the problem.
Well, on February 21, the AP ran a story by Margaret Lillard, dateline Raleigh, NC, which explained in some detail the concerns of CAFOs' neighbors and environmentalists. See, it isn't that the AP never has decent priorities. But in that article, which tells of a public protest against the lagoons, we hear factory farmers' side of the story, and we hear about the neat-o energy producing potential. So when the lead is an ecological angle, the AP finds room for "balance," but when it's an industry angle, one source will do.
Never fear, though. While the offending AP story about Bush's speech didn't have room for dissent -- or expert sources -- it did have room for this gem:
Outside, Bush was shown a blue and green stock car that runs on ethanol. He leaned down and fiddled with the wheel a couple times, but didn't climb down into the tiny driver's seat.