I rarely watch "regular" television news any longer, at least not around other people.
They tend to be annoyed by my yelling at the television.
There’s a damn good reason for my frustration — too often, mainstream news in the US ends up obscuring the actual story. Take this story from NBC San Diego from May 24: "How Much Lead is in Your Child’s Drinking Water? Some San Diego Day Care Centers Have Dangerously High Levels, Report Finds." {1}
One daycare, La Petit Academy in Rancho Peñasquitos, had lead levels in some of its drinking fountains at levels 2,200 times the legal acceptable limit.
Keep in mind that there is no fully "safe" level of lead ingestion. Dr. Michael Young, a medical toxicologist at Kaiser Permanente, said that "even at low levels, lead can cause serious issues." Young added, “It can lead to cognitive disorders, it could decrease intelligence and a host of organ system failures, if not detected early."
The article says, "NBC 7 reached out to le Petit Academy to ask about the findings. In a statement, they said that the highest lead results were from drinking fountains that had not been used since before the pandemic and that they had been removed from their site."
I want to emphasize two phrases the daycare used in its statement: "the highest lead results" and "not been used since before the pandemic."
Maybe it’s because I read "The Monkey’s Paw" at an early age, but regardless the reason, alarm bells went off in my head when I read those phrases. Not because of what the statement says, but rather, for what it does not say.
Their statement clearly implies that the problem of lead in water from their drinking fountains is fixed, but that’s far from what they actually said.
- "The highest levels were from" specific drinking fountains. That’s nice, but that does not give us any information about the lead levels for any of the other drinking fountains at the facility. That statement is true even if every other fountain in the facility exceeds the legal limits by, say, merely two thousand times instead of two thousand and two hundred times. If the other drinking fountains in the facility were within the legal limit, why didn’t they say that?
- "Before the pandemic" might feel like it was ages ago, but it’s only been a few years. Those children who were exposed to those staggeringly high levels of lead are all less than nine years old. (The daycare takes children from 6 months to 6 years old.)
This is the kind of critical reading and thinking that mainstream news {2} coverage often doesn’t actually say out loud, and is usually only found on "comedic" news shows like Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show. {3}
It’s when those programs violate the social norms by actually saying the quiet parts out loud that helps creates their humor. Last Week Tonight in particular has run well-researched, in-depth coverage of dozens of stories that rivals that of any "mainstream" think piece out there and actually says what the story means. Those segments often have bad jokes, crazy mascots, or a long-running gag that means I hear John Oliver’s voice whenever I see Adam Driver on screen, true. Regardless, that degree of basic analysis is crucial to us being well-informed.
But those programs that dare rock our sensibilities are pushed to the side and not considered "real" reporting.
We, the viewing public, are the problem with the news. We are voting with our attention and our dollars for this kind of obfuscation pretending to be objectivity.
While mainstream news still seems to be too cowardly — or beholden to advertising dollars — to point out things like this, at least we have comedians who are willing to provide that kind of analysis.
{1} To their credit, the reporting notes that "the San Diego center was not an outlier" because "high lead levels" were found "up and down the state."
{2} Lest anyone be confused: I am not talking Fox News, OAN, and the like here at all, due to their tendency to spread misinformation and lies. Y’know, like that Dominion lawsuit which Fox settled for $787,500,000 for lying about the election. This is about reporting more facts, not fewer.
{3} Over four years, Trump’s "false or misleading claims" totaled 30,573 — but it was still rare to hear them called lies in "regular" reporting until after the insurgency on Jan 6, 2021. (For example, see this Vox article from 2018 about the "debate" over that issue.)
Featured Image by Krzysztof Pluta from Pixabay