Reading Eagle follows the herd, chokes on air-quality report

The Reading Eagle had a rare environmental story today, on Page A11, about how bad the air we're breathing in Berks is.

The print-version headline said “Berks earns ‘D’ in report on air quality; up from ‘F.’ ”

The web-site version said “State of the Air Report offers mixed bags for Berks, region.”

I guess a business-friendly editor gave the order – tone down the bad news about Berks.

The article says: “Berks was the only county in the study to have a worse result in year-round particle pollution, dropping very slightly from last year's score. And Berks had the biggest drop [in grade] of all the counties in short-term particle pollution, falling from a ‘C’ to an ‘F.’ ”

The story then quotes a doctor saying air pollution is bad for people – duh!

But it doesn't say why Berks’ air is getting worse.

Did you know the state Department of Environmental Protection has deep data on ozone days and particulates – the cancer-causing dust that lodges deep in your lungs?

Did you know landfills and battery manufacturers are big contributors to air pollution? And Berks has a lot of both. 

Why not ask the Berks County Chamber of Commerce what they think about Berks’ air being so polluted, and about regulations to reduce it?

Instead, the Eagle sent two – two! – of its award-winning reporters to Baltimore along with half of North America’s press herd to report on things we read about on the Internet 12 hours earlier.

Maybe the Eagle’s reporters could spend a day or two investigating the decline of air quality in Berks. Might even qualify for a journalism award.

But truth and a better quality of life are not the goals of Berks County’s pseudo-newspaper.

Sensational front-page headlines and pleasing the Establishment are.

Berks County needs better journalism.

Reading Eagle wraps freak show in Christian virtue

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Reading Eagle had a top story Saturday about Marie Monville, who spoke at a Good Friday men's church breakfast about her anguish and suffering after her husband shot 10 girls, killing five, at the Amish West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County more than eight years ago.

The story about her is distasteful. It’s in the newspaper, but it has little to do with news. A news story would tell us how much she got paid and to whom she donates her book proceeds.

In the meantime, I can’t find a story in the Eagle about Reading Mayor Spencer’s rare town meeting with residents on Thursday, which would be news. But who wants to hear from city residents when we can get this titillating stuff ….

Monville is benefitting from an incomprehensible tragedy in which she had no role.

She’s using her freak status -- "Look at me! I slept with an absolute monster!"

Her message is fluff -- faith, forgiveness, renewal, resurrection. The editors know a segment of Berks County just gobbles this stuff up. “We’re Christians. God will preserve our privileged lives so we don’t have to do anything ourselves to challenge injustice.”

We know the Amish community forgave her. That’s old news. Anyways, what are the Amish supposed to tell her? That they're going to hunt her down and finish her off?

Then the reporter’s hyperbolic, gratuitous editorializing: "On Good Friday, she paralleled that type of selfless love with Jesus on the cross, suffering betrayal, hardship and insults, but choosing to allow God to bring redemption, with the memorable and powerful words of Jesus still resonating: ‘God forgive them for they know not what they do.’ "

And the gratuitous sexist comment from the pastor: "It also showed the strength of a woman."

I'd feel better about her if she was stumping for better mental-health services to identify people who shouldn't have guns.

I’m jonesing for real news from our award-winning newspaper. I’d start with, how does spending $250,000 from the Berks County environmental-defense fund for a parking lot for a tourist train help defend our environment?

Berks County needs better journalism.