Clearing The Air

The Silencing of Science

This study investigates the silencing undertakings that developed around the smoking article that claimed secondhand smoke might not be as dangerous as usually believed.

It uses both quantitative and qualitative data to examine the silencing tactics employed by the different kinds of partisans. We then examine international media coverage of this study, based on searches of the Internet. The results of the Internet search, which indicate a high degree of self-silencing by the media..

All of the stories on secondhand smoke were examined, and the results revealed a strikingly one-sided discourse consistent with self-silencing by the media. Specifically, out of more than 500 articles examined, fewer than 10 afforded any sense of either scientific uncertainty or of negative findings challenging the prevailing consensus. -Sheldon Ungar and Dennis Bray

The media and the pro-smoking activist groups which fund them have determined that in order to railroad their smoking ban agenda through local governments nationwide only one side of the issue can be presented to the public......that fact was confirmed by this University of Illinois at Chicago Project Director who received $2.3 million from pharmaceutical nicotine interests at RWJF to study the effects of media coverage of smoking bans and their effects on future enactment of smoking bans.

Therefore, you also won't find the American Cancer Society air quality facts which prove secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA regulations, on the front page of your local newspaper, or on your local network broadcast.......it doesn't however, make those test results any less factual.......just damaging enough to the pro-smoking ban movement that the activists don't want you to know about them.

(text in red=supporting data hyperlink)

posted by marcus aurelius @ 11:17 AM