Infectious disease is still very much with us, writes David Huber of the Manhattan Institute in the Wall Street Journal, in spite of early successes with such diseases as smallpox and polio. And new diseases, or new forms of old diseases, could hit us with alarming force at any time. Germs don’t give up; they are “always future, always reinventing themselves in their ingeniously stupid and methodically random way.” Is government ready to address the potential catastrophe of mass epidemics? For more, click here.

Infectious disease is still very much with us, writes David Huber of the Manhattan Institute in the Wall Street Journal, in spite of early successes with such diseases as smallpox and polio.  And new diseases, or new forms of old diseases, could hit us with alarming force at any time.  Germs don’t give up; they are “always future, always reinventing themselves in their ingeniously stupid and methodically random way.”  Is government ready to address the potential catastrophe of mass epidemics?  For more, click here.

Charles Peters on the Prize for Preventive Journalism

What is preventive journalism, and why is the foundation I head, Understanding Government, offering a prize of $50,000 for the best example of it published in the next year?   We define preventive journalism as reporting that identifies inept leaders, wrong-headed policies and bureaucratic bungling before they lead to disasters like the bad intelligence about WMDs and the travesty that was the response to Katrina.

I now realize that I must have had my first glimmer of the need for preventive journalism as a young West Virginian who would hear of a mine disaster, then read heartbreaking stories of weeping widows and indignant editorials demanding effective safety regulations. But in the years that followed, no reporter went down into the mines to see if they were safer. We only found out they were not after the next disaster when a new round of heartbreaking articles and indignant editorials would appear.

It is to stop such cycles of tragic futility that Understanding Government is giving the Prize for Preventive Journalism — and offering enough money to wake reporters and editors up to the crucial importance of finding out what’s wrong in time to keep bad things from happening.

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