Too Much Big Business Crime; Too Few Journalists Reporting It

March 16, 2015

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNews.com

Over the past decade, David Heath, a reporter for the Center on Public Integrity, has made national news with a string of stories related to the corruption of public health by people who sell us out for profit.

His latest deep dive, discussed on the CPI web site (http://www.publicintegrity.org/), comes under the heading “The Politics of Poison,” and tells us how the chemical industry uses its political muscle to bury what appears to be fairly clear science that formaldehyde is killing a lot of people.

Formaldehyde is used in pressed-wood products, such as particleboard, plywood, and fiberboard; glues and adhesives; permanent-press fabrics; paper product coatings; and certain insulation materials. That means it’s all over our homes-—the floors, kitchen cabinets, furniture, our walls. And it’s even on our bodies, integral to those convenient wash and wear clothes.

Formaldehyde has been classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s been specifically linked to increased cases of leukemia.

Despite a growing body of evidence that formaldehyde is dangerous to public health, the chemical industry has been on a sustained full-court press to keep EPA reports buried, to stack review boards with their own people, to get friendly legislators to throw as many nails in the road as possible to avoid any action that might limit sales.

The nightmare scenario for the chemical industry is that the public will finally get enough information about formaldehyde to demand more control on how it’s used, if at all. When CBS 60 Minutes aired a program the other day that linked products from the company Lumber Liquidators to formaldehyde the company’s stock dropped 50%. The industry has good reason to fear exposure.

If this sounds familiar, it mirrors the decades-long battle of Big Tobacco to suppress evidence that cigarettes kill people, and the on-going fight by the fossil fuel industry to deny the science of climate change.

We’re not talking here about a few rogue individuals who grew up on the wrong side of the morality tracks. No, the fight to over-ride the science that damns dangerous products is all-too-often industry-wide. Top executives, and the lobbyists and lawyers and PR and ad people who represent them.

And it makes you wonder about the individuals who call the shots in these industries. Do they have children who will grow up in these polluted environments? What do they hear at religious services when priests and pastors and rabbis intone about right from wrong? What do they tell their spouses about what they did at work that day? What happens at high level meetings when plots are hatched to distort facts for profit? Does everyone around the table agree? Does anyone have self-doubts?

Does he ammo executive who dreams up ways to prod NRA enthusiasts to rush out and buy armor piercing weapons yuk it up about his clever strategy with his friends? Does he get a bonus for it? How about the traders who artificially inflate utility rates or manipulate a trusted interest rate like Libor? Top management of those firms must know what’s happening and either promotes it or condones it.

We can rail against regulators who don’t regulate, or legislators who don’t legislate, but what about the business culture that preys on the public? You can’t confuse this with capitalism. It’s fraud. It’s stealing at the very highest level. Money. Health. Futures of entire communities. And for the most part these crimes are committed by people who already are very well off financially, with homes, cars, and fat bank accounts, making decisions to rip off and endanger those who aren’t.

Do they teach his in business schools? Do business schools preach against it? These are not idle questions, because as long as the rich and powerful live in a culture where morality is divorced from decision-making and the only god is greed, no amount of regulating and legislating will get us back on track. Even Pope Francis seems to be struggling with this problem in his own domain.

Washington, D.C. is neck deep with journalists ready to report the minutia of every politician, every political decisions, every election. What if some fraction of that journalistic army turned instead to doing what reporters like David Heath do--unwrapping the cloak that hides the egregious behavior of leaders in industries that directly impact public health, safety and general well-being. It’s fertile territory, since so few publications and reporters go there. When they do, as we see with the 60 Minutes Lumber Liquidators story, the public pays attention.

The fastest way to change bad behavior is to expose it. Journalism prides itself on its ability to do that job. David Heath and a few others---very few others---are doing that job where it really matters. The fact that they are such a lonely bunch is literally letting a lot of rich and powerful people get away with murder.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)