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Associated Press caught 'restructuring' old EPA news to mislead readers; mainstream media blindly plays along

Wednesday, January 22, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Associated Press, restructured news, EPA

Associated Press

(NaturalNews) Four days ago, the Associated Press reported that coal-fired power plants are dumping enormous quantities of pollutants into U.S. waterways. According to the Associated Press, the EPA says that coal-fired power plants are dumping nearly 2 million pounds of aluminum, 79,000 pounds of arsenic, 64,000 pounds of lead and even 2,820 pound of mercury each year into U.S. waterways.

This original story by the AP (dated January 18, 2014) was published, word-for-word, across the Denver Post, ABC News, the Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News and even Salon.com.

There's only one problem with all this reporting: nobody bothered to check their sources.

The original AP story turns out to have been "restructured" from old news, packaged to appear like breaking news for 2014 even though it actually traces back to 2009 (see below). AP actually featured the story in its "Big Story" section which implies that the stories published there are big, breaking news stories.

Associated Press quotes no one and cites no announcement or study

In its original story:

• AP never cited any person or department within the EPA.

• AP never linked to any announcement, publication, story or press release by the EPA.

• No scientific study was cited or named.

• No other news organization that ran the AP story bothered to check whether there was a legitimate source or scientific study to support these data. They simply ran the AP story word-for-word, without bothering to fact-check a single statement in the story.

The information actually goes back to an EPA paper published in 2009

I did a little digging on this -- a journalistic habit which I fully realize makes the people at AP extremely angry, as no one is supposed to actually fact-check the "Ministry of Truth" on what it publishes. (Which is why the AP routinely gets away with such loose journalism and why Reuters is almost always a more trustworthy source for news.)

It turns out this story goes back to a proposed rule from 2013 in which the EPA described its desire to restrict wastewater pollution as revealed in a scientific report issued in 2009. (Found here - PDF)

This PDF file describes the toxic effects of lead, cadmium, aluminum, mercury and so on.

So how did the Associated Press create a whole new story in 2014 based on old news from 2013 which was itself based on an old study from 2009? The AP simply "restructured" the story as if it were a recent announcement by the EPA, all while making sure nobody was actually cited in the story. I have no doubt that when this story ran a few days ago, the people at the EPA were scratching their heads and wondering, "Huh? Did we travel back in time or something?"

I wonder what it feels like to work at the AP and be able to just make up whatever news you want and magically have hundreds of mainstream media newspapers blindly copy and paste it onto their own websites without even asking for a single source or citation. For the record, folks, that's not journalism. That's an embarrassment to journalism.

The EPA has an important point in all this

I don't disagree with the substance of the EPA's concern, however. The EPA has an important point, and wastewater pollution from coal-fired power plants is a very big problem for our world. The routine release of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and other toxic elements into our world is justifiably alarming, and I'm personally seeing alarming evidence of this pollution showing up in my laboratory testing of foods for toxic heavy metals.

But the way in which AP dredged up a proposed rule from early 2013 and then managed to get this engineered story replicated across hundreds of other news websites -- all while not citing a single source for their story -- just smacks of the kind of abandonment of journalistic standards we've all come to expect from the Associated Press. Does anybody fact-check stories at the AP? Or is that too "old school" for the AP now?

The really sad part in all this is that neither the Washington Post, nor the Denver Post, nor ABC News nor anybody else bothered to fact-check this story, either. As far as I can tell, Natural News is the only news organization in the world who has fact-checked this story.

FYI, here's what the AP says the EPA claims is being released into waterways each year in the U.S. via coal-fired power plants:

• Aluminum: 1.97 million pounds

• Arsenic: 79,200 pounds

• Lead: 64,000 pounds

• Manganese: 14.5 million pounds

• Mercury: 2,820 pounds

• Nitrogen: 30 million pounds

• Phosphorous: 682,000 pounds

• Selenium: 225,000 pounds

• Zinc: 4.99 million pounds

For the record, I don't agree that nitrogen, phosphorous, selenium and zinc belong anywhere near the same threat category as lead, arsenic, mercury and aluminum.

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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