Dishonest Reporting on Rio Tinto Road Unacceptable | Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes

Turns out local citizens aren’t the only ones who have questioned the Marquette Mining Journal’s often appalling coverage of the Rio Tinto 595/Woodland Road ore hauling issue over the past year.

On February 4 the Mining Journal published an article called “Marquette County Road 595 Push.” That same day staff at federal and state agencies discussed the baffling number of “mistakes” in this one article.

Referencing the Mining Journal’s oft-repeated claim the planned road would impact fewer wetland acres than previously thought, and that the EPA “opposed” the road project, one state regulator at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment wrote, “we did not hear anything about a reduction in impact from 27 acres to 22 acres nor did the epa go on record as opposing the Co. Rd 595 project at our December meeting.”

An EPA staff member responded “there is a lot of misinformation in the article . . . I was careful not to say that EPA opposed CR-595. I told them that I would review the application when it came in. And they told us that they didn’t have a route, so we did not know what the impacts would be.”

Another glaring mistake involved a claim about the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community’s (KBIC) role in the process. According to the article, “a review of the Woodland Road project was requested by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, which brought federal regulators to Michigan to analyze the project.”

Not true. According to a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the EPA and the state of Michigan, signed in 1983, the EPA is legally obligated to analyze projects that exceed certain pollution thresholds, including Rio Tinto’s ore hauling road project.

Puzzled, staff at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, “I wonder where the reporter got that piece of information . . . I’ve worked with this reporter before – and he’s usually good – but in this case he clearly didn’t check his sources.”

An EPA staff member said, “As you all know, our review was based on the MOA not KBIC.”

My suggestion to these regulators: get used to it, because it happens all the time at the Mining Journal.

In January, after reading some Mining Journal coverage of the Rio Tinto hauling road controversy, I sent an email to the managing editor, his assistant, and the reporter covering the issue, pointing out some inaccuracies in their coverage:

A January 23 editorial said, “local environmentalists have claimed victory.”

The paper’s January 18 coverage suggested both that “environmentalists” and other opponents “suggested a north-south route be developed.”

What did the Mining Journal do in response? Nothing. When I sent follow-up emails, or after several other citizens wrote them? Again, nothing. They issued no corrections, failed to respond with any kind of documentation supporting their claims, and even continued plodding ahead with the same misinformation.

Now, I understand the Mining Journal has a pretty straightforward bias toward industry over public interests – any media outlet can be expected to have a bias. The key is in making sure that bias is open and clear from the outset.

The Mining Journal’s bias was perhaps evidenced best on this issue in a February article, basically showing that Rio Tinto did a thorough job looking at many alternative routes for its ore hauling plan. Never mind the EPA was crystal clear, way back in March of 2010, that Rio Tinto did a poor job of looking at alternative routes. The EPA went so far as to say “the scope of the analysis was insufficient” and “from our analysis of the project area and application materials, we have concluded that the full range of alternatives for providing a route between AAA road and US-41 has not been considered.”

Apparently not clear enough for the Mining Journal, which headlined their article, “Kennecott looked at many options for ore haul route,” using Rio Tinto’s Matt Johnson as their only quoted source for the story.

As the only daily print source in Marquette County, the Mining Journal has considerable latitude in making decisions over what facts to cover, omit, diminish, or exaggerate in any given article. Often enough they do show some restraint in not allowing their bias to overcome reality. Unfortunately, on the Rio Tinto hauling road issue, the Mining Journal’s coverage has been riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies that, when corrected by others, remain in place, uncorrected and, in fact, continued on in future coverage.

Considering how significant Rio Tinto’s project may be to the region’s environment, wildlife, public health and economy the Mining Journal ought to stick with the facts from now on and act proactively and ethically by correcting themselves when valid evidence shows they are wrong.