ABSTRACT

Every year thousands of uncontroversial policy decisions are made about health or environmental risks and technological innovations, incorporating good scientific, medical, and engineering knowledge, without inordinate difficulty. Think of the myriad regulations about building standards, patents, earthquake and fire protection, food inspections, drug approvals, new projects, construction and maintenance of highways and bridges, public health and sanitation, allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum, and so on. The original source of news about a hazard or objectionable technology may be a government agency, a consumer or environmental group, a scientific journal, a single prominent scientist, or an international organization like the IPCC, all with good access to well-placed journalists. Human interest is an obvious feature of newsworthiness, most clearly when the hazard is personalized, perhaps the plight of an enraged but articulate mother concerned about a perceived cancer cluster in the neighborhood, or a source of chemical contamination endangering her children.