Just about the last place I'd expect to find blatant liberal media bias is Manchester New Hampshire's Union Leader, but today's page over the fold carries the headline "Bush Blocks Roadless Rule". The lead paragraph: Governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in remote areas of national forests under a Bush administration proposal to boost logging.
Central to the issue is whether the regulations will be imposed at the federal level banning new roads in the national forests, or whether there will be some control at the state level. The article goes on at length to say what a catastrophe it will be for the environment, and for our national forests, if the states have any say in the matter. And of course, it also points a finger of blame. Jan Pendlebury of the NH-National Environmental Trust, said yesterday the Bush proposal is simply “gutting the rule” to accommodate the President’s friends in the timber and oil industries.
Oh, the President's friends. Right. The article goes on to describe the roadless rule, adopted by the Clinton administration during its final days in office in January 2001, as just what "many endangered species and birds need". Says Mike Cline, a forest ecologist who once worked for the International Paper Company: “That’s our bank account for so many of these animals.” After fourteen paragraphs of environmentalists saying how tragic it will be if any road building is allowed, amazingly, we get this from Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch: “The roadless rule is struck down nationwide,” Valetkevitch said, referring to a 2003 ruling by a federal judge in Wyoming. “We are trying to create a rule that will pass legal muster.”
Oh really. So it's not Bush who's blocking the roadless rule after all. It's the courts who threw it out. Twice. This is what passes for reporting at the Union Leader?
The three-year-old rule has twice been struck down by federal judges, most recently in a Wyoming case decided in July 2003. That case, which environmentalists have appealed, is one of several pending legal challenges, complicating efforts to issue a new plan.
Then there is the matter of forest fires. The story barely mentions forest fires. Maybe it's because this is New Hampshire, where we get our fair share of rain, but out west they have big forest fires and lots of them. Each year about 3.8 million acres of forest is consumed by fire. In 2000, an extraordinary year for forest fires, nearly 123,000 separate fires burned 8.5 million acres of forest. That prompted a lot of discussion about the potential for environmental regulation to contribute to the forest fire problem by preventing the thinning of overgrown forests. It's commonly accepted that culling out smaller trees and dense undergrowth makes it harder for forest fires to spread, and roads are needed for this to happen. Roads themselves can act as fire breaks. But the article's only mention of forest fires is: Republican lawmakers have criticized the roadless rule as overly intrusive and even dangerous, saying it has left millions of acres exposed to catastrophic wildfire.
That's it. As if to imply that Republicans are only making excuses, trying to protect commercial interests at the expense of the environment.
It is a truly remarkable hit piece in fine liberal fashion. And this from what was once considered a bastion of conservatism. Maybe I'm wasting my breath here. Bush bashing is certainly in vogue these days, and who am I to spoil the party. But wouldn't it be great if editors at the Union Leader would impose a little adult supervision and insist that headlines match the stories under them. Wouldn't it be great if the Union Leader would insist their reporters go that extra mile, and get all sides of a story, particularly for stories that grace the front page. Unfortunately, with this story the Union Leader demonstrates that it isn't a leader of anything. With this story the Union Leader is just piling on.
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