What do you think? When a newspaper carries a story about an industry, should the reporter interview industry spokespeople? Or should he assume that all he’ll get from them is spin?

It seems to me that not only do reporters interview industry spokesmen but that they rely far more on what the spinmeisters think than they do on more objective sources. A Thursday Post-Dispatch article, “Truck miles way up, but fatalities remain flat”, is a case in point.

After a horrendous accident where a truck driver plowed into stopped traffic, killing two people and critically injuring others, P-D writer Elisa Crouch started her article with an observation from someone who’s not making money from the trucking industry: “Jeff Burns, transportation counsel for the Truck Safety Coalition, a national advocacy group dedicated to reducing truck crash fatalities.” He was allowed to point out the obvious: “Anytime you’re stopped on the highway, you’re in grave danger of being rear-ended by a semi'”, before he disappeared from the story and truck industry spokespeople took over.  

They pointed out that truck traffic is about fifty percent higher now than it was in 1975, but that fatalities from accidents in which trucks are involved are hardly any higher. Part of the reason fatalities haven’t risen is that:

Federal rules governing rest time and random alcohol and drug screening are doing their jobs ….

That’s good. But let me just mention that federal regulations of industries are the sort of thing that said industries virtually always oppose–until they get a chance, afterward, to puff out their chests over the fine results.

Do not mistake this complaint for a diatribe against the trucking industry, though. I eat more than my share of bell peppers, shipped no doubt on trucks. But the P-D article shrugs its shoulders over the 5,000 fatalities a year from accidents involving trucks. C’est la vie, it seems to say.

It could have pointed out, instead, as Jeff Burns did, when I called him, that the study the trucking industry spokesman cited is flawed. That study only took into account accidents in which one truck and one car were involved. Often, trucks plow into several cars. Such accidents weren’t included in the study.

More important than that, however, is that in 1997 Secretary of Transportation Slater announced that the trucking industry would cut traffic deaths involving trucks by 50 percent in the next ten years. At the same time, the FAA aimed for no deaths from plane crashes each year. The FAA has met that goal in quite a few years.

But since the trucking industry made no progress toward its goal, it changed the goal. It said instead that it would keep the number of deaths the same in light of increasing truck traffic. But there are a variety of reasons why the death rate hasn’t gone up, none of them the doing of the trucking industry: cars are safer now (they have more air bags; they’re more crash resistant) and highways have more dividers to prevent head on collisions.

The P-D article could also have pointed out that the rules mandating more rest for truckers still gives them, too often, insufficient sleep. Burns told me that being a trucker is the most dangerous profession in the country. Truckers die on the job more than workers in any other industry.

So. Back to the original question: should reporters even interview industry spokespeople? Some would say that surely it would be unfair not to let them at least answer their critics. But consider: what we get is seldom answers, it’s spin. I’ve written before about how the Corps of Engineers spins what it does for the barge industry. That being the case, maybe those spokespeople don’t deserve space in the news article. Or if they do, it should be minor and relegated to paragraph eighteen. (You know–the spot where the underfunded but well intentioned safety experts are usually quoted.)