The long table of ongoing and completed research projects in Kornberg's paper, for example, was dutifully ignored by Newsweek's Newspeak scribblers on 7/17/78, who adorned their "work" by a picture entitled "The electrical smog" showing a cow with caption "Directly under power line: stunted growth," a figure captioned "300 - 500 ft away: changes in blood chemistry," and a house captioned "1,000 feet away: behavior changes (reaction time falls)." By this time the evil radiation from the power line has reached the end of the page, which is too bad, for the next caption might have been "5,000 feet away: red-headed virgins are possessed by the devil."
But far more nauseating, in our book, is a Newspeak article of 12 Nov. 79, in which Carolyn D. Lewis relates her thoughts on nuclear power. She seems honest and sincere, but she is also naive: doubly naive as a member of the Kemeny Commission, and triply naive as a Columbia professor of journalism. Not that she has an axe to grind like some of her co-commissioners¾Taylor, who forever rides his proliferation hobbyhorse; or von Hippel, who is as antinuclear as a Princeton physics professor can be without becoming as ludicrous as Kendall; or Peterson, a pious practitioner of the antinuclear religion. Nor could she be expected to master all the aspects of engineering and public health in a mere 6 months; but what this professor of journalism lacks are the simple skills of an investigative reporter.
"How many lives are we willing to sacrifice," she ponders as she points to nuclear power, "to sustain our standard of living?"
About 40,000 per year, professor, in the non-nuclear generation of electricity; and that toll could be reduced in direct proportion to the replacement of conventional power plants by nuclear ones. Nuclear power saves lives.
"Anything that is man-made and man-run is subject to the consequences of human frailty," she discovered, but unfortunately only for the case of nuclear plants, though the very example of TMI should have made it clear why the consequences of human frailty are incomparably better contained in nuclear plants than in any other power plant of equal capacity. She never found out that hydroelectric dams are man-made, too, or that they can kill 200,000 people at a time; she never asked what Boston would look like if one of the LNG tankers docking at Everett exploded; she is frightened by a halflife of 25,000 years (as if it were relevant!), but not by the infinite halflife of the toxins in fossil fuel wastes. She never asked the crucial question "Compared to what?" Even von Hippel, if cornered, might have told her.
Perhaps Woodward and Bernstein started a tradition: "Investigative reporting" is what a journalist is handed on a silver platter. The dishonest reporter distorts it, and the honest reporter parrots it; but the truth, let alone the whole truth, seems to be none of his concern.
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Vol. 7, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 7 Issue/No.: Vol. 7, No. 5 Date: January 01, 1980 03:04 PM Title: Huxley, not Orwell
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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