Our readers will recall that last week we forwarded a note to some editors at the Associated Press concerning some irregularities I identified in a story that ran earlier in the week that contained a claim from anti-nuclear activist Arnie Gundersen that soil samples he took in Tokyo would be classified as low level radioactive waste in the U.S.
Late on Friday afternoon we received a one line answer from Cara Rubinsky, the AP's New England Editor: "We have reviewed your concerns and obtained a copy of the report from the lab that did the testing. We do not believe a correction is warranted."
Considering the details we shared in our message to the AP, the response seemed less than adequate. Here's the latest note I shared this morning with Rubinsky, AP Editor Evan Berland and reporter Dave Gram.
Late on Friday afternoon we received a one line answer from Cara Rubinsky, the AP's New England Editor: "We have reviewed your concerns and obtained a copy of the report from the lab that did the testing. We do not believe a correction is warranted."
Considering the details we shared in our message to the AP, the response seemed less than adequate. Here's the latest note I shared this morning with Rubinsky, AP Editor Evan Berland and reporter Dave Gram.
Hi Cara,As always, we'll keep you informed as to what happens next here.
Please forgive me if I find your response to be insufficient, and hardly in the spirit or the letter of your organization's own published standards. In fact, your reluctance to provide precise details in response to my query raises more questions than it answers. With this in mind, I have several follow up questions that I must insist you answer:
1. Which laboratory performed the testing on the soil samples? Are you planning on publishing the lab report? Will you share the precise results with your readers? If not, why not? Why didn't the AP provide the precise results in your initial report?
2. How did Dave Gram go about reporting the original story? Did he obtain the lab report from Arnie Gundersen before he wrote the story, or did he simply rely on the statements that Gundersen made in the video posted at the web site of Fairewinds Associates?
3. Once you obtained the lab report, how did you go about verifying Gundersen's claims? Did Gram verify the results of the lab tests before the story was published, or did your team simply attempt to verify them after the fact once we had lodged our complaint? Your one line response to our initial query seems to imply that this might have been the case.
4. Did you consult a health physicist or other radiation protection professional at any time in the course of your reporting? If not, why not?
5. Why didn't you disclose Gundersen's role as a paid consultant for the state of Vermont? Were you and your reporter aware that Gundersen was being compensated for his work there? Other public reports claim that Gundersen is paid somewhere between $185 and $300 per hour for his work. Don't your readers deserve to know this in order for them to fully evaluate his claims?
I look forward to a more constructive response.
Best,
Eric McErlain
Senior Manager, Web Communications
Nuclear Energy Institute
Comments
OK. Should their salaries be included in the articles quoting them? That would be required to meet the standard that's been posited for Mr. Gundersen.
And what about nuclear industry consultants who are only identified as "bloggers"? How is that full disclosure?
The real problem is that many on this board feel that anyone who opposes nuclear power is, by definition, not qualified, because they've reached such a stupid conclusion. This self-sealing argument is fallacious, and shouldn't be applied to outside media outlets.
As for Gundersen, how many demonstrable libels and slanders are going to go unchallenged before someone has the gumption to haul him into a court of law?
Poster conveniently continues to forget about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and has no familiarity with the legal standards for libel and slander.
Just because you don't LIKE what someone says doesn't make it libel.
Nonsense. This is a matter of funding. Gundersen has his own consulting firm, and it is not unreasonable to expect to know who his customers are.
Meanwhile, the NEI is a trade group, which is supported by member dues, and it publishes who its members are and the conditions for membership.
The difference in transparency between Gundersen and the NEI is the difference between night and day.
Furthermore, when the NEI is quoted in a news article, nobody with any sense fails to understand who they represent and what their point of view is. When Gundersen is quoted by the press, it is not at all clear who he is, who he represents professionally, and what he's paid to do and say.
"And what about nuclear industry consultants who are only identified as 'bloggers'? How is that full disclosure?"
Can you give us an example of such a "blogger" who doesn't reveal his or her ties to the nuclear industry?
What's most troubling to me is here we have a relative few professionally questionable individuals, like Arnie, who are exploiting and steering the nuclear ignorance and nightmares of the public, to effect and impact the energy and economic security of this nation out of all proportion to their expertise and specious "evidence". That these fear-mongers have been allowed to run loose totally unchallenged of their "facts" and assertions swaying whole populations so long is a travesty and likely a measurable handicap to our whole economy.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
As many people in this discussion can testify, my musings on Atomic Insights and in other discussion forums are often posted at very strange hours, perhaps due to the sleep patterns I developed while learning my trade as an engineering officer in the nuclear Navy.
Circling back to the topic at hand - the AP and others like to portray the discussion about nuclear energy as being two sided - the industry on one side and independent, public interest groups on the other. It cannot seem to accept that some people are truly, passionately in favor of nuclear energy as the BEST solution to many of our most pressing energy challenges because we are passionate about making the world a better place.
Even the NRC is guilty of seeing the nuclear discussion as two sided. Here is a quote from a blog about meeting with social media representatives that still frosts me.
"The first session focused on those with industry ties, and the second on those in the public interest/watchdog sector."
http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/10/13/blogging-about-blogging/
We are NOT in the industry because it is a reasonably well paying profession; most of us are smart enough to be able to make more money with less stress in other endeavors. Most of us are NOT pronuclear because we have industry ties; many of us have industry ties because we are in favor of nuclear technology!
Disclosing the funding sources behind people who fight against nuclear energy is important because the public needs to understand that much of what you read about nuclear energy comes from people with close ties to the fossil fuel establishment - which obtains incredibly large rewards when nuclear competition gets pushed out of the market.
For example: During the period from March 11 - December 31 2011, as Japan gradually shut down nearly every nuclear plant in the country, the fossil fuel industry's revenues from sales to Japan increased by $55 billion. It is not "conspiracy theory" to notice that the fossil fuel industry spends a lot more money on advertising, which directly supports organizations like the AP, than the nuclear industry does.
How many times during the Fukushima frenzy that make Gundersen a media darling on networks like RT did you see commercials for "clean natural gas" with its newly found abundance "right under our feet". I have suggested many times that the ad revenue might be partially responsible for the slants taken in the stories. Some scoff, but it is hard to argue with tens of BILLIONs of dollars worth of motive at stake.
As a syndicator of new stories, the AP is highly interested in helping increase the revenues for its subscribing companies. Publishing antinuclear material is a safe way to do that - it benefits a block of big advertisers, each with annual "media buys" in the tens to hundreds of millions and upsets an industry where a budget increase of perhaps $2 million per year represents a doubling of its ad effort. There is a reason that our media is called "commercial" - it is because commercials are what makes it possible for the "news" to be delivered for "free."
That is the real disclosure that is missing.
One more thing about Gundersen's income from Vermont as a consultant working to shut down Vermont Yankee. Because of perverse laws, nearly every dime of that money passing through Vermont's treasury actually came from Entergy, the owner of Vermont Yankee, which was billed for the "services" of the board formed to review its operations.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Poster conveniently continues to forget about the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and has no familiarity with the legal standards for libel and slander.
Just because you don't LIKE what someone says doesn't make it libel.
April 2, 2012 3:26 PM”
Upon reconsideration, I fully agree with Anonymous’s interpretation of libel law and the 1st Amendment,
In unrelated news, I am announcing the results of my own investigation, including my photos of Helen Caldicott, Arnie Gundersen, and Ralph Nader in a sloppy ménage-a-trois involving the threesome frolicking on a panda bear rug while smoking crack from pipes carved from white rhino horns. In between sessions of signing large checks from the American Gas Association, they gleefully peruse stacks of child porn and shoot heroin into their jugular veins. Some photos show the trio in compromising positions with Satan, who is obviously endorsing their activities.
I will be submitting my report on these disturbing findings to the Associated Press, New York Times, and CNN, but will not be releasing the actual photos, or any physical evidence. For those who want more information, I will be making periodic videos for my YouTube channel, and going on tour to promote my book, “Essence of Evil: How the Antinuclear Industry Poisons the Planet with Lies“, which is being published by my vast consulting conglomerate, ScareWinds Associates, where my current title is Exalted Grand Poohbah and Chief Engineer.
James Greenidge
Queens NY