How The Media Reports The News According To An Agenda - #1

Headlines In A Recent USA Today (Jan. 14, 2011): “Pregnant women rife with chemicals.”

As soon you read these headlines, you know that a fraud is being perpetrated. The statement is so outlandish and so sensational that you just know there’s a skunk in the woodpile somewhere.

When you take even a cursory look at the body of the article and a data table therein, it becomes even more definite that a fraud is being perpetrated. Here is the table:
“Pregnant women’s bodies are likely contaminated with dozens of toxic chemicals, a new study finds. Percentage of the pregnant women studied having detectable levels of the following chemicals:”
Perchlorate (ingredient in rocket fuel) -------------------------- 100%
BPA (used in plastics) ----------------------------------------------- 96%
Lead ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 94%
Mercury ----------------------------------------------------------------- 89%
Cadmium (toxic heavy metal) -------------------------------------- 66%
DDT (banned pesticide) --------------------------------------------- 62%

What?!!! All pregnant women have rocket fuel in their bodies?? How is this happening? After you become pregnant, does the doctor prescribe rocket fuel?

Ninety-six percent have BPA (plastics) in their bodies? Are plastic bags that much of a threat?

Ninety-four percent have lead. I know there’s a danger that the kiddies will eat old lead paint off of the windowsill, but pregnant women?

Mercury. Cadmium. DDT. What is going on here? After a woman becomes pregnant, does her body suddenly become a sponge for all of these chemicals? What’s a woman supposed to do, become a bubble-woman for nine months?

If you read the entire newspaper article, which most people don’t , you find the complete truth and the source of the deception, buried near the end of the article.

The newspaper article never actually tells us who performed this “new study”, but we are told that the results were published in Environmental Health Perspectives. Going on-line, I found the publication and the study results. The authors work for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and at the University of California – San Francisco in the Program on Reproductive Health. So it’s the usual suspects: the EPA and people in San Francisco.

I also found this very interesting quote from the abstract of the study results: “Conclusions: Pregnant women in the U.S. are exposed to multiple chemicals. Further efforts are warranted to understand sources of exposure and implications for policy-making.” The abstract also states that the level of chemicals found in pregnant women is the same as or lower that for all women.

The newspaper article also quotes a person from the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental extremist group, saying how “disturbing” these findings are, and saying that the situation may be “even worse”.

And then comes the whole point of this manufactured scare piece. The newspaper article says that the findings should be a “call to action” to overhaul the main law that regulates chemicals.

Only near the end of the newspaper article does the writer come clean and admit that it’s a ruse, in order to avoid being outright dishonest, I suppose. Here at the end of the newspaper article it is stated that real experts in the field (American Chemistry Council), as contrasted with environmental activists groups, say that as part of every person’s daily life, as we breath air and drink water, minute traces of chemicals occurring naturally in the environment will come into our bodies, and that modern chemical testing techniques can detect exceeding small traces of such substances, traces that are far below any danger level. And we also learn, near the end of the article, that even the Center for Disease Control (CDC), says these findings are of no concern.

Nowhere in the newspaper article are we told that the study’s authors themselves said that more effort is needed before conclusions can be drawn regarding implications for environmental policies.

But yet, in spite of the disclaimers by the study’s authors and opinions from legitimate, non-biased experts that the study results are of no significance, we have the blaring headlines about those pathetic pregnant women’s bodies being so horribly contaminated with chemicals, and a call for action to fix this terrible problem via even stricter laws and regulations.

This article has given us a lesson in the methodology of the media as they report the “news” according to an agenda. First, they find some sensationalized, manufactured data or opinions from biased advocacy groups that are pushing an agenda. Next, they present this as legitimate news, complete with alarming headlines, and use it as a “call to action” for even more draconian governmental restrictions and regulations. Then at the end of the article, beyond the point where most people have stopped reading, they cite legitimate, objective experts that counteract everything said previously in the article about the disturbing findings and the need for a call to action.