Misleading Media Stories Department

From Knight-Ridder news we get this little gem.

Ok, so we have a headline that reads:

Enforcement of mine safety seen slipping under Bush

the lede (which I was taught is supposed to encapsulate the entire story so the headline readers get a brief of the whole article) reads:

Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient
toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and
smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators
owed, a Knight Ridder Newspapers investigation has found.

The next few paragraphs point to lower and fewer fines and reduced staffing in the ranks of Inspectors. So far, so good, right?

So why is this paragraph buried?

“Within the last five years the number of fatalities have been cut in half,"
said National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston. "From our
perspective that's where we ought to be focused. It is what is happening to the
absolute number of injuries - and the rate of injuries - that has gone down.
Mining is no longer the most dangerous industry in the United States."

The entire article is spun so that there is a definite attempt to make this all Bush’s fault. But the facts presented in the article frankly do not support that contention. What I can read (if I get all the way through the article) is that fines have dropped, collections have lagged, number of citations has increased by quite a lot and deaths and injuries have decreased since Bush took office.

In other words, there are much more important measures of whether mine safety is improving than how much money is being collected by the feds in fines.

Like, for example, fewer deaths and injuries.

A more accurate headline would be:

Mine Owners and Unions disagree over measures of mine safety enforcement

With a lede:

Since the Bush administration took office in 2001, fewer and smaller fines have been issued for mine safety violations and collection of fines have also lagged, while actual deaths and injuries have declined.

But that would be accurate, can't have that, can we?