Letter to the editor: Associated Press stories slanted

Associated Press stories slanted

Tuesday’s CNJ carried a story written by Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press: “Gulf dead zone one of largest ever.”

This article is typical of my beef with AP articles your paper publishes. Many of them are slanted with a progressive view point to manipulate public opinion on certain political issues.

This particular article hints that the increased size of the dead zone in the Gulf is due in part to global climate change via “sea level rise” and “storms.”

According to Nancy Rabalais and a team of scientists from the Louisiana University Marine Consortium who study the dead zone annually, this has been a high rain/runoff year in the Midwest, which causes more nitrogen and phosphorous discharge from farming operations into the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers (37 percent higher than in 2007).

Nitrate-nitrogen stimulates phytoplankton growth, which then lies on the gulf floor and decomposes, absorbing oxygen, creating water that cannot support life.

Another deception in the article is that storms (perhaps increasing in number from climate change?) have some causal relationship with the dead zone. Reality: Hurricane Dolly actually helped reduce the dead zone because storms roil and thereby aerate the bottom waters. None of this is mentioned in Burdeau’s article.

If anything, the green revolution impacts the dead zone because farmers are encouraged by the government to grow more feed stocks for biofuels, which increases fertilizer usage, therefore more nitrate runoff.

A healthy skepticism should be exercised when reading the mainstream press and other news sources because they no longer can be trusted for accuracy and honesty. Question everything and you will be surprised what you discover.