Roadless (litigation, rulemaking, projects) seem to be of interest to our group as it involves mapping and zoning, and attempting to make some of these designations permanent, through rulemaking rather than legislation. Right now it involves local (state) versus national decision-making, the role of national environmental groups and a host of other themes of interest to us.
I’d like to contribute to this dialogue by reviewing press articles and observing 1) how closely they stay to the facts (clarity and accuracy), 2) their fairness and 3) whom they choose to speak and the accuracy of the statements quoted. I’m expecting that this will be of interest because roadless areas and polices, unlike planning rules, have distinctive facts associated with them- sometimes that may be too complex to get across in a news article.
I’d like to improve the knowledge and the quality of discourse around this issue- which can be fairly ideological. This is not to criticize members of the press; in the space they have, sometimes all they can say is something generally true with quotes from people who have varying degrees of accuracy and agenda associated with their comments. That’s where I think blogging with people interested, and knowledgeable, with varying points of view, will add substantially to public dialogue on this important subject.
Our first example will be this piece from Noelle Straub of Greenwire in today’s New York Times.
I would give it a score of 15. 5 out of 5 for clarity. 5 out of 5 for accuracy. 5 out of 5 for fairness. That’s a 15 out of 15. Congratulations, great way to start us off, Noelle! If this were an iconic American summer sport, you’d have hit it out of the park!