What do Barbra Streisand and D.C.’s natural gas monopoly have in common? Neither one has grasped that trying to suppress bad news is the surest way to draw attention to it.
It looks as if Washington Gas would very much prefer that people don’t read this new report from environmental advocates describing the health dangers of gas appliances they tested in the D.C. area. So much so that the company appears to have pressured local CBS affiliate WUSA9 into burying a story about the report that ran last week.
Activists at the Beyond Gas Coalition, which backed the study, say they were disturbed to discover that a story by environmental reporter Scott Broom disappeared off the station’s website and YouTube channel shortly after it hit the airwaves last Thursday. When they called up WUSA to inquire, they say the message they received from the producer who worked on the story was that the station made the decision at the behest of the utility company, choosing to pull the story down and hide the video from its YouTube channel until it could include a statement from Washington Gas. As of Wednesday morning, there’s been no sign of its reappearance. Broom didn’t immediately respond to an email.
“Why would you squelch something that’s that important?” wonders Barbara Briggs, the study’s author, who Broom interviewed for his piece last week. “It’s important on a policy level, but it’s also important for families, especially right now before the holidays. And for that reason, I think that it should get out.”
But Loose Lips would note that, for at least some news outlets, the importance of any story unfortunately tends to diminish when it involves a major advertiser, such as Washington Gas. (Amusingly, the company has previously sponsored WUSA’s “#EnvironmentMatters Recycling Day” in a classic bit of greenwashing.) The report itself may be a bit wonky, but WUSA’s story (filmed in Briggs’ apartment kitchen) paints a clear picture about the dangers of gas appliance emissions that the utility surely has a business interest in suppressing.
“[Broom] was really excited about the content, I think he knew the quality of the work that we were doing,” Briggs says. “I’m guessing that this is really just past his pay grade at this point.”
It might be good journalistic practice to agree to include a statement from the utility company if it raised objections with the report’s methods—Washington Gas wasn’t mentioned in the article, but it’s the only provider of natural gas in the D.C. area—but that’s no reason to scrub the story from the internet once it’s already aired. Mark Rodeffer, political chair of D.C.’s Sierra Club chapter, observes that the company could simply hold off on ever issuing any statement promised to the TV station, effectively killing the story. What will WUSA do if that happens?
Neither the TV station nor Washington Gas responded to LL’s requests for comment.
Fortunately for the public (and unfortunately for the utility company), Broom’s story lives on thanks to the Internet Archive and on YouTube, where the station has unlisted it from public view but left it online. Headlined “Thanksgiving warning: Gas stoves linked to dangerous indoor air pollution in DC and Maryland homes,” the piece delves into the report’s conclusions and recommendations for how to cook safely with gas appliances on Turkey Day.
In all, Briggs tested 663 gas-powered kitchens in D.C. and Montgomery County and found dangerously high levels of nitrogen dioxide in 63 percent of them. In D.C. proper, she found that 77 percent of kitchens exceeded healthy limits of the gas, which is viewed as a leading cause of asthma in children, with average readings nearly double the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended threshold.
Briggs says she was spurred to start doing this work after reading about the emerging research consensus about the dangers of gas appliances. Scientists have recently argued that gas stoves, in particular, lead to 40,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union and the United Kingdom and result in more than a million annual asthma cases there. Researchers have also found that the stoves can raise indoor levels of the carcinogen benzene above those found in secondhand smoke. But Briggs says it’s much less expensive to test for nitrogen dioxide, so she’s focused her work on studying these effects locally.
“This is a moment when people are going to be in their kitchen for hours, and there are immediate things that can be done to reduce your exposure and your family’s exposure to these emissions,” Briggs says. “Don’t open just one window, open two windows. Put a fan on exhaust. Do as much of your cooking and pre-cooking as possible using the electric appliances that you have already instead of using the gas flame. In other words, use that only when you absolutely have to.”
At a broader level, the report recommends that governments expand programs spurring the transition to electric appliances and eventually ban the use of natural gas in the construction of new buildings. What a coincidence, then, that Washington Gas has fought these policy measures tooth and nail in D.C. The company has waged a multifront war on the city’s new program promoting electrification for low-income residents and sued to stop the enforcement of D.C.’s impending ban on the installation of gas appliances in new buildings. WUSA’s story happened to mention all of these details—another bad look for the utility firm.
Over and over again, D.C.’s utility companies have shown that they are not afraid to use their influence (and ratepayer dollars) to protect their bottom lines. If they can’t muddy the waters with spurious claims about the environmental benefits of dirty fuels, then they might as well just try to shut down any critical coverage entirely. And in D.C.’s precarious local news environment, it’s easier than ever to bully journalists who fear their jobs may disappear at any time.
Still, anyone hoping to learn more about the report can read a detailed accounting of it from the Washington Informer. For now, at least.