Publication Items

The federal government has not only done very little to protect the public from the mass-casualty threats chemical facilities present to neighboring communities, they've focused efforts on keeping the public from knowing about those threats or the government's own failures to keep them safe. Now the U.S. EPA has signaled that it is about to revise a key rule governing chemical facility safety and security.

Here are some starting points for covering the science of how we're changing the Gulf, our semi-enclosed sea, from Randy Lee Loftis, environmental writer for The Dallas Morning News: orientation, geography and population; commerce; oil, gas and chemicals; marine life and fisheries; and the dead zone. Photo: Creolefish at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. Credit: IFE/URIIAO.

It's not like you can't figure these things out. Trains full of explosive crude oil, for example, may be obvious as a string of 100-odd identical black tankers rolls through populated areas. The number on the DOT-required diamond-shaped flammability placard on each car probably has the number 1257 on it. But it's not just crude oil that's an issue.

SEJ is hardly alone in complaints about EPA's press office gagging agency employees who might talk to reporters. In a July 8, 2014 letter, 38 journalism groups called on President Obama to stop the political spin of information at many federal agencies. Reminding Obama of his still-unkept promise to run the most transparent administration in history, the groups complained about widespread "politically driven suppression of news and information."