{"id":3754,"date":"2016-03-15T06:05:42","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T12:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=3754"},"modified":"2016-03-15T06:05:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T12:05:42","slug":"the-sound-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2016\/03\/15\/the-sound-of-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sound of the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

NPR\u2019s Renee Montagne\u00a0was interviewing<\/a> federal EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy this morning when I got out of the shower. It was a good story that went on for seven minutes. They were discussing Flint. I didn\u2019t hear most of it, but when asked when the water would be safe to drink again, I did hear McCarthy say this,\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is that we did testing on the water filters and indeed the water filters do work very, very well even when the lead in the system is high.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Now I don\u2019t have any particular view on the role of EPA in this whole thing. I confess I don\u2019t know enough about what they did or didn\u2019t do. It is indeed good news that filters can remove lead from that water. And as part of that answer, McCarthy did concede that “it\u2019s going to be a long time before people are comfortable drinking that water.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0So it\u2019s not really fair of me to launch into her or her agency, as I\u2019d be more than happy to do to Snyder and his administration. And to her credit, the administrator did unambiguously say, in response to a question about the racial implications of the problem in Flint, \u201cThere is no question that this is an environmental justice issue.\u201d<\/em> Still, I do have a complaint about the report (which might come as no surprise to you)…<\/p>\n

In response to a comment like this from the bureaucrats, be they from DC or East Lansing, it\u2019s beyond me why reporters just let that kind of comment go. It\u2019s institutional happy talk (true or false) that amounts to \u201cNothing to look at here, anymore. Move along.\u201d<\/em> In my not so humble opinion, any reporter who gets that sort of response from a top level official seeking to assuage concerns about some disaster should immediately ask this followup question.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you<\/strong> drink the water, when you were there? Would you<\/strong> drink it and shower in it if you lived there?”<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if the good Governor Snyder\u2019s appointed Flint city manager has a family or has kids, and I frankly don\u2019t care to look it up in that browser window over there, but if he does I\u2019d like to know, \u201cHas\u00a0he<\/strong> moved his family<\/strong> to Flint? Are they<\/strong> drinking our of bottles or from taps with these filters that (good news tells us) are working?\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect I know how they\u2019d both answer those questions. They\u2019d make the story sound just a tad different, wouldn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NPR\u2019s Renee Montagne\u00a0was interviewing federal EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy this morning when I got out of the shower. It was a good story that went on for seven minutes. They were discussing Flint. I didn\u2019t hear most of it, but when asked when the water would be safe to drink again, I did hear McCarthy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3755,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3754\/revisions\/3755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}