National (U.S.)

Censoring Science: Inside The Political Attack On Dr. James Hansen And The Truth Of Global Warming

 

by Mark Bowen,
Dutton, 336 pages, $25.95

Reviewed by Craig Pittman

On June 23, 1988, a scientist named Jim Hansen spent five minutes talking to a Senate committee. Hansen said he was 99 percent sure the Earth was getting warmer because of the greenhouse effect, and he predicted that 1988 would turn out to be one of the warmest years on record.

Althoughhe spoke inanIowa-bredmonotone, Hansen's testimony electrified the committee hearing.When he tried to leave,Hansen was surrounded by reporters.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

The Secret History Of The War On Cancer

 

By Devra Davis

Basic Books (2007), $27.95
Reviewed by JenniferWeeks

In 1971 President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, formally launching a war on the second-leading cause of death in the United States. The legislation promised more funding and targeted government support for cancer research. "The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease," Nixon urged in his State of the Union Address earlier that year.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Millipedes and Moon Tigers: Science and Policy in an Age of Extinction

 

By Steve Nash
University of Virginia Press, $22.95

Reviewed by Christine Heinrichs


Environmental change manifests in ways so different, its fragments can seem unrelated. Steve Nash's 15 feature articles, brought together in book form, stitches the fragments together, telling a dramatic story of the changes rippling through our world.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry Of Everyday Products Who's at Risk And What's At Stake For American Power

 

By Mark Schapiro
Chelsea Green Publishing, $22.95

Reviewed by Susan Moran

In the quagmire of the Iraq war, the United States has lost credibility as a world leader. In Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, investigative journalist Mark Schapiro offers another version of the erosion of American leadership. In this case, it's how the U.S. government has gone from one whose environmental laws and regulations were once a model for other nations to one whose standards have fallen so far below those of even some developing nations.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Slideshows Can Highlight Big Projects, Offer Readers More

 

 By CASEY McNERTHNEY

Every story has moments that get left out in the retelling. Sometimes those moments are what reporters remember most, but have a hard time describing in a print news story.

Because of the Internet, those moments—both in images and audio—now can be shared with the readers.

The inflections in a source's voice, the photos that help explain, the odds and ends you collect that would normally be buried on your desk – those now have a place in an online slideshow.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Studies Look At News Bias And Internet's Impact On Coverage

 

 By JAN KNIGHT

 The Internet has transformednewsaboutoil spills by providing accounts that rivet global attention and go beyond official versions of the disasters, a recent study suggests.

Specifically, environmental groups' increasingly sophisticated Internet use has expanded the ways in which oil spills are framed. Via their websites, email and blogs, the groups have interrupted official efforts to control information about the spills and mobilized local and international action, according to the study.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Details Of People's Lives Enliven Book On Oil Production

 

 By BILL DAWSON

Lisa Margonelli is an Oakland, Calif.-based freelance journalist, a fellow of the NewAmerica Foundation, and the author of Oil on the Brain, a book that describes "petroleum's long, strange trip to your tank."

Margonelli has written for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Business 2.0, Discover and Jane. She was a recipient of a Sundance Institute Fellowship and an excellence in journalism award from the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Media On The Move

 

Edited By MIKE MANSUR

Jim Handman and Pat Senson, producers with CBC Radio's weekly science progra, "Quirks & Quarks," have won the 2007 ScienceWritingAward from the American Institute of Physics. It is the second time the team from Q&Q has won the prestigious prize. The program has been a runner-up in the SEJ Awards three times.

Topics on the Beat: 
Visibility: 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - National (U.S.)