Oh, come on.
Anyone who follows media types on Twitter knows that conservatives and liberals alike are strongly suggesting reporters keep their powder dry and save the real outrage for when it’s deserved — after all, it’s been settled among our intellectual betters that a Trump presidency will lead to certain armageddon, either through nuclear war or climate change … maybe both, in the form of nuclear winter.
Overplaying their hand at every opportunity is one of the reasons voters turned their backs on the media when they went to vote, and it doesn’t look like the media has learned its lesson.
Take, for example, a piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post on Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA, filed under the headline, “Trump to name Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA.”
Fair enough … although Jim Roberts, who has enjoyed high-powered gigs at the New York Times, Mashable, and Reuters, preferred this alternate headline:
The ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency is about to stop protecting the environment. https://t.co/sKW9kXEXHn
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) December 8, 2016
There’s already been a full day’s worth of drama over the “existential threat to the planet” Pruitt’s appointment would be, but if the EPA truly is going to stop protecting the environment, is that such a bad thing, considering the bang-up job the agency has done recently? Look how quickly the EPA responded to this huge toxic spill … that was the fault of the EPA.
EPA accidentally releases toxic wastewater into Colorado river, turning it orange: http://t.co/x9O3yXStvT pic.twitter.com/ndGoH0peng
— ABC News (@ABC) August 7, 2015
Oops. Give it time and $28 million and nature will clean it up. And the person responsible for the spill? The one accused of violating the Clean Water Act and giving false statements? No biggie.
Justice Department Won’t Prosecute EPA Worker Over Waste Spill in Colorado – WSJ https://t.co/aFdLKoFiMk
— Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) October 13, 2016
Oh, and remember what a great job EPA head Gina McCarthy did with the Flint water crisis? Outstanding.
.@GinaEPA claims @EPA was virtually powerless to @MichiganDEQ: "We were strong armed, we were misled…we couldn't do our jobs effectively."
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) March 17, 2016
So, the EPA is finally going to stop “protecting” the environment? Good. We can think of a few federal agencies that could stop “helping” for the next four year.
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