A New Leaf

Granted, perhaps mine is a premature conclusion, but I feel pretty confident making it. Newspapers have to drive traffic, so they use different headlines, like “Cellphone Radiation May Cause Cancer”, though the proper headline is something boring like “No Compelling Evidence Linking Cellphone Radiation to Cancer”.

The WHO says (pdf):

The evidence was reviewed critically, and overall evaluated as being limited among users of wireless telephones for glioma and acoustic neuroma, and inadequate to draw conclusions for other types of cancers. The evidence from the occupational and environmental exposures mentioned above was similarly judged inadequate.

where “limited” means:

A positive association has been observed between exposure to the agent and cancer for which a causal interpretation is considered by the Working Group to be credible, but chance, bias or confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence.

In other words, they cannot reject the hypothesis that cell phone usage does not increase the risk of cancer. Looking at summaries of the evidence does not change my mind; there is really only one study that finds a statistically significant increase in cancer risk. And if you pool it with the other data points, there is no effect at all:

Also, if you ask University of Maryland physics professor Bob Park about it, he will say:

All cancers are caused by mutant strands of DNA. Electromagnetic radiation can’t create mutant strands of DNA unless the frequency is at or higher than the blue limit of the visible spectrum the near-ultraviolet. The frequency of cell phone radiation is about 1 million times too low.

via DF and MR.

A Harvard student paper (via Harper’s) documents the way the NY Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today talk about waterboarding – do they call it torture, or do they use “softer” language, like “enhanced interrogation techniques”?

The headline finding is that before 2002, the NY Times and LA Times almost always called waterboarding torture; after 2002, they almost never use the word “torture” to describe the practice… except if the people doing the waterboarding are not American.

Pernicious. It relates to the bru-ha-ha over the Rolling Stone article that effectively ended Stanley McChrystal’s career – worth a read if you have not yet. (On page 1: “Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides. “Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.” [N - Classy.]) It appears that other journalists are lining up to criticize the Hastings piece as unfair or unprofessional, or something along those lines. Matt Taibbi, also writing for the Stone, responded:

If I’m hearing Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes and say, “Excuse me, fellas, I know we’re all having fun and all, but you’re saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don’t shut your mouths this very instant!” I mean, where did Logan go to journalism school – the Burson-Marsteller agency?

But Logan goes even further that that. See, according to Logan, not only are reporters not supposed to disclose their agendas to sources at all times, but in the case of covering the military, one isn’t even supposed to have an agenda that might upset the brass! Why? Because there is an “element of trust” that you’re supposed to have when you hang around the likes of a McChrystal. You cover a war commander, he’s got to be able to trust that you’re not going to embarrass him. Otherwise, how can he possibly feel confident that the right message will get out?

Taibbi goes on to point out that the Pentagon has 27,000 employees in their PR department – almost the size of the entire State Department. They don’t need any help getting their message out.

This is the kind of thing we can’t legislate or dictate. It’s cultural, I suppose. And I’m just speculating here, but I can’t help think that people respond to this kind of subtle manipulation. Newspapers need to fix more than their distribution mechanisms and business models if they want to survive; they also need to think long and hard about their purpose and mission.