Understanding Government

Rob Stein brings an alarming situation to light in the Washington Post: sick people all over the country, including cancer patients, are encountering drug shortages and often are unable to get the most effective treatments available.  Medicines hit by shortages range from important cancer drugs like cytarabine (used against leukemia) to the most basic form of painkiller available to patients suffering serious pain: morphine.  In some cases, manufacturers have stopped making the drugs because higher profits are no longer available after patents run out, and generic manufacturers can’t meet the demand.  Some manufacturers are blaming the Food and Drug Administration, saying its overly stringent safety standards are preventing drugs from reaching the marketplace.  But Stein’s reporting makes it clear that manufacturing problems and supply chain mixups are the more likely culprit.  This is a clear case for urgent federal oversight.

A simple solution to a lethal problem could come with the stroke of a pen — and save lives.  It remains out of reach because the Food and Drug Administration’s unwieldy review process.  Gardiner Harris of the New York Times investigates something  basic and alarming — the misconnection of plastic tubes that are used to deliver medicine, anaesthetic, and other vital substances to patients in America’s hospitals.  The tubes are often very similar, and can easily be fitted into many different devices.  The result can be painful and sudden death when medical workers make errors and connect the wrong tubes — liquid food can be inserted into a vein, and air bubbles can end up in people’s blood streams. (more…)

One of the challenges preventive journalism faces is that it combines so many specialties:  writing, reporting, historical analysis, and evidence-based forecasting.  Skeptics we’ve talked to about this approach say you can’t report on something that’s going to happen in the future.   But as NPR’s Deborah Amis makes clear in her recent interview with Prof. Tad Patzek of the University of Texas, expertise in predicting the future (and avoiding tragedies like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) is a field we can’t afford not to develop.  (more…)

If you’re not a big fan of oil spills, consider the potential impact of a major release of radioactive material somewhere in the U.S.  Rebecca Smith reports in the Wall Street Journal on a situation that needs urgent attention from concerned citizens, from politicians, and from government agencies.  Thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored in more than thirty states and there is still no national plan for dealing with it.  They have a plan in Finland, and now that Yucca Mountain is out, there may be an eligible storage area in New Mexico.  Are we really going to wait around for this disaster to happen?

A great example of the connection between solid reporting and improvements in government can be found in the Washington Post‘s initial reporting on the alleged effort by Umar Abdulmutallab to incinerate himself aboard AA 253 in an attempt to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people.  Three top Post reporters — Dan Eggen, Karen DeYoung, and Spencer Hsu — look at how Abdulmutallab got on the plane and begin tracking the policy and political implications for the Obama administration.  They report that the suspected terrorist was already on a federal watch list — but not on a no-fly list.  Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima manage in the space of 24 hours to get Abdulmutallab’s biography and compare his alleged crime to similar tactics used by Al Qaeda in the recent past.   Peter Slevin gets us inside the plane and talks with the man who first tackled the suspect and helped put out the fire.  But these reporters weren’t alone:  the print edition lists how many other reporters and researchers contributed to these stories — fifteen at least — including journalists in Yemen and London.

If the Post makes a profit this year, it won’t be because of stories like these.  And yet the Post‘s and other papers’ detailed and up-to-the minute reporting will have profound long term effects.  This kind of journalism drives the Sunday talk show narratives, shapes first comments from every congressperson who gets in front of a microphone, and forms initial public opinion.  More important, this kind of reporting shapes the trajectory of government actions from day one — and in an organization the size of the U.S. government, first steps really count. Officials from TSA, the FAA, and from FBI, CIA, and many other agencies will be influenced by reporting from the Post and other national news sources even as they work with information the public may never know.

Approaching the end of a tumultuous year, we can be thankful for the contribution to national security made by professional journalists who, consistently and accurately, help us understand the way world works — and help citizens judge how well our government reacts to threats like the one on American Airlines 253.

Ned Hodgman