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Saturday, April 15, 2006

Surprise, Surprise: The New York Times Get It Wrong Again.

In the immortal words of Jared Paul Stern:

"We know how to destroy people, It's what we do. We do it without creating liability. It's our specialty."

From Townhall.com we get this piece of investigative reporting by Jonathon Burns:

The New York Times has done it again. They’ve gotten the story wrong. Unfortunately, instead of reprimand and public scorn for their efforts in sloppy journalism, the Times has seen one of its journalists granted an Overseas Press Club Award. Now an innocent man stands to lose 10 years of his life, and a nation faces dramatic losses in foreign investment, thanks in no small part to irresponsible journalism.

In September of 2004, New York Times journalist Jane Perlez came out with an expose detailing how gold-mining giant Newmont “polluted” Buyat Bay in Indonesia and caused the deaths of innocent villagers, including a baby girl. Shortly after the article was published, Rick Ness, CEO of Newmont in Indonesia, and several other employees were arrested and some of the employees were thrown into Indonesian prisons alongside hardened criminals and recently captured terrorists. Observers hailed the act as a positive crackdown on evil Western companies. After all, Western companies are all hell-bent on stealing Indonesian resources and raping the land, right?

[snip]

Despite the blind idiocy of the Overseas Press Club, the truth is that Jane Perlez and the Times are better at sensationalism than investigative journalism. In fact, it’s not certain who or how many villagers she interviewed, or if she even went to Buyat Bay in person. I personally interviewed several villagers and Buyat village leaders, and none of them had ever heard of Perlez or of any woman journalist coming to their village for interviews. Had she interviewed any villagers, she would have easily discovered that the Bay is a popular local draw for vacationers, drawing in thousands on the weekends. Since she won’t agree to an interview, one can only wonder how much solid investigation went into the research for her articles.

Perlez got the “pollution” story utterly wrong. The only science that backs up her assertions of the Bay’s pollution is a sketchy police study and a Canadian specialist she dug up. In the latter case, the gent didn’t travel to Buyat, but he did thoroughly analyze a seaweed sample Perlez procured from her enviro-friends.

Conveniently absent from any of Perlez’ articles are mention of any of a litany of well-respected scientific groups which have conducted studies of the Bay. The Minamata Institute of Japan (the world’s leading authority on mercury poisoning), The World Health Organization (WHO), and numerous other groups have all cleared Newmont of any wrongdoing. Interestingly, the WHO report said the mercury and heavy metal levels of the Bay and nearby estuaries were normal... and better than many places in the U.S. The report attributed the slightly higher levels of mercury in the streams for neighboring communities to artisanal mining operations. Artisanal mines are native-run and notorious for poor health and pollution standards. Yet mention of the artisanal mining activities are conspicuously missing from Perlez’ articles.

Read the whole thing...

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