Big Media vs. the Swarm

Beside the bullying behavior of Big Energy, another troubling aspect of the story about environmental activist Panagioti Tsolkas' spirited fight against Florida Power & Light's expansion plans has been the media coverage.

Writing last week for the Palm Beach Post's "Seeing Green" blog, for example, reporter Christine Stapleton called Tsolkas a "self-described anarchist." She also deployed the "anarchist" label in the post's headline.

Now, could you imagine a Big Media reporter calling the CEO of a Big Energy company a "self-described capitalist"? Or the director of a Big Green organization a "self-described social democrat"?

What's the rhetorical purpose of a designation like "self-described anarchist"? To let readers know they shouldn't take the activist's ideas seriously because he inhabits the political "fringe" -- even though some of the United States' most prominent intellectuals inhabit that same "fringe"?
 

Also troubling is the unwillingness of some Big Media reporters working the Big Energy beat to call a spade a spade.

Take for example a June 11 story on a public hearing about Progress Energy's plans to build a new reactor at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant near Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer reporter John Murawski included the pro-nuclear comments of one Nina Cann-Woode, who he identified as a field representative of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

But Murawski did not identify the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Guess it's a grassroots group like Tsolkas' Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition?

If so, guess again.

It's actually a public relations campaign for new nuclear reactors funded by the nuclear industry's trade association and headed by former Bush Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- a fact anyone could learn with a quick visit to the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch website.

But when the swarmers at the N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network contacted the newspaper to ask for a clarification, they were told to write a letter.

For the opinion page.