"The National Weather Service moved to fire one of its top managers Friday, four days after he was quoted in an article in The Washington Post lamenting that budget cuts and the threat of further reductions in March were forcing him to pare back a public safety service."
"The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - known by its critics as a 'corporate bill mill' - has hit the ground running in 2013, pushing 'models bills' mandating the teaching of climate change denial in public school systems."
"Three senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee defended a clean-energy grant program Wednesday, saying Republicans used misleading figures in a report earlier this month to slam the initiative."
"The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge in New Orleans to require BP to produce documents that outline how it low-balled the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from its Macondo well in 2010. The estimates were sent to the Coast Guard and Congress."
"A paltry 1.2 percent of headlines in prominent media outlets focus on environment. That's the depressing finding from a study out today that surveyed headlines from 43 news and related organizations between January 2011 and May of 2012. Interestingly, Fox News devoted significantly more time to covering the environment, including healthy doses of climate change-denial, than did MSNBC and CNN ...."
Sunshine Week is a great opportunity for journalists to do the most important part of the job: spotlighting the very news that government officials are uncomfortable about disclosing. The website includes examples of good freedom-of-information stories, permission-free cartoons, logos and icons, and many all-purpose story ideas.
"Last month Fox News reported on the 'grizzly deaths' of 500 songbirds in West Virginia. Behind the fell deed: a wind farm, caught red-turbined. 'To date, the Obama administration... has not prosecuted a single case against the wind industry,' the Fox reporter laments. Opponents of renewable energy love to trot out the risk wind turbines pose to birds, and some engineering work has gone into making them more avian-friendly. But a new study released today in Nature shows that if you really want to protect birds, forget about wind: You need to lock up Kitty."
