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in recent days, there has been no shortage of totally outrageous news. take, for instance, this article in the washington post (a reputable paper, i'm sure you'll agree). i assume there's bias on the part of the reporter toward the judge's ruling and away from rat poison companies. so i can't help but wonder what else was in the statement from the VP of the National Pest Management Association besides "screw your kids, kill the rats!" come on - nothing about wanting to protect against accidental ingestion of a known poison? no voluntary measures the industry is taking to protect consumers? no regret at the fact that their product harms people, disproportionately young children, disproportionately poor young children? (who else would be unsupervised in a house with a rat problem that is protected by pellets of rat poison rather than glue traps or the orkin man?) "consumers will be losers with less effective products" and not a word about safety? no PR person in his right mind would make such a statement. i understand that the journalist wants to make a case, to prove a point, but doesn't she have an obligation to present something that at least makes an attempt at objectivity? the nytimes has a version that's even more partial here.

i'm as outraged as the next person that the administration overturned an evidence-based policy and provided no substitute as an apparent gimme to the pest management industry--is there anyone these guys aren't indebted to? i'm disgusted that the EPA--as usual practice--negotiates with the people it should regulate. but i don't want some journalist deciding how many of the facts she can give me while still keeping my point of view in line with hers. if i want an opinion, i'll read the damn op-eds. i read articles for news. how much does it really cost to add dye to pellets? what is the real change in effectiveness when you add bittering agents to rat poison? what's the difference in cost and is that cost passed onto consumers rather than absorbed by the industry? in other words, where's the real investigation in this article?

(credit to today's papers at slate.com for making me a more critical, and better, consumer of the news.)