It pays to read past the headline and lede paragraph of Washington Post news stories. Here’s a case in point. In an article published yesterday, the headline blasted, “New Trump power plant plan would release hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the air.”
The lede paragraph elaborated: An overhaul of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan “could significantly increase the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”
Yet, according information appearing lower in the story, the Environmental Protection Agency’s impact analysis found that the administration’s proposal would make “slight cuts to overall emissions of pollutants, including CO2, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide.” The newspaper’s beef is that the Obama plan would have bigger cuts — twelve times as big.
Someone — whether the reporter, the editors, or both, I don’t know — apparently can’t grasp the difference between the concept that the administration’s plan would reduce CO2 emissions by a smaller amount and the concept that it would increase CO2 emissions.
And, oh, by the way, deep down in the article, the reporter, Juliet Eilperin, noted that electric utility carbon emissions will decline without regulatory intervention in any case “because of market pressures and other factors after the new rule takes place.”
I suppose we should give Eilperin credit for getting some basic facts straight in the story. But someone botched the interpretation of those facts up top. Either they are innumerate or blatantly biased — or possibly both. If “Democracy dies in darkness,” the WaPo is the one drawing the curtains.
The Washington Post keeps close track of President Trump’s lies, inaccuracies, and mis-statements. I wonder if it keeps track of its own.
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