How do you gain perspective on a widespread public health disaster? Award-winning reporter Apoorva Mandavilli shares valuable lessons on using a small lens to cover a big story — no, not COVID-19, but the deadly 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India. And as she explains in this Inside Story Q&A, this decades-old story never really went away in the first place.
"Kathryn Foxhall remembers a time when reporters could call up any doctor or researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ask them questions on the record. A journalist might even get them to open up for a “background” interview, offering candid information on the condition the expert’s name would not be used."
Video: "The Post’s Margaret Sullivan explained March 31 how President Trump’s coronavirus task force briefings can veer away from newsworthiness."
"Miners with black lung struggle during the pandemic with layoffs, benefit cuts and the threat of a virus that would almost certainly kill them".
"Covid-19 and climate change are testing a food system that critics say has lost its resilience."
"The people who cleaned up the 200 million-gallon Deepwater Horizon oil spill say they are still dealing with the health and economic fallout."
"The Trump White House has intervened to weaken one of the few public health protections pursued by its own administration, a rule to limit the use of a toxic industrial compound in consumer products, according to communications between the White House and Environmental Protection Agency."
"Environmental groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a March memo signaling that the agency would not seek penalties against companies that do not monitor their pollution during the coronavirus outbreak."
"The Trump administration on Thursday weakened regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic."
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