The Cupertino Courier

Letters & Opinions

Thinking like a Boy Scout--being prepared

By Carol Bogart

It's a tricky business deciding how much, or how little, to report on events that might happen--and, if they do, people should be prepared; or might not, so you don't want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.

A couple such scenarios come to mind:

* Catastrophic earthquakes

* Bird flu

In my own career, I have faced that conundrum more than once.

In Atlanta, as a cub TV reporter covering mostly cops and courts, I had a favorite "source" at the cop shop, a robbery lieutenant who always seemed open and forthcoming.

One summer, there was a double shooting at a well-known "Lover's Lane." Three weeks later, another young couple lay slumped in the front seat, again shot dead through the windshield.

A pattern, I decided.

I trotted down to the police department and asked my favorite source: "Are you looking for a serial killer?"

Gary (that was his name) took me aside and, in hushed tones, said, "off the record," the FBI had done a profile and yes, they did think he would strike again. They thought they knew when, and they were going to do a stakeout.

If I sat on the story, and they got the killer, he promised me "an exclusive."

An exclusive is always nice, but more important was not blowing the stakeout. I didn't want it to be my fault if they didn't get their killer.

So I kept the story to myself.

The expected time frame came and went. Gary assured me there was nothing new. And didn't tell me they'd pulled the stakeout.

Not long after, a third couple was found shot to death at the Lover's Lane.

It came out that other reporters in town had had the same suspicion. They, too, had agreed to wait, not wanting to screw up the stakeout.

Instead, two more people died and the killer, as I recall, was never caught.

It haunted me.

If I, if all of us, had reported the pattern in the first place, would the third couple have gone to that Lover's Lane? The episode was debated on Atlanta talk radio for weeks. The journalistic consensus was: It's our job to report the news, not manage it.

On the flip side, I also remember the afternoon I went downtown to join the Optimist's Club for lunch. The superintendent of the water treatment plant, a great guy, was a member, too, and sat down beside me.

He told me his phone had been ringing off the hook all morning because of my front page story. "Little old ladies in tears" were calling, wanting to know if it was safe to drink the water.

I'd been doing an ongoing investigation into an old landfill leaking into a river that was the primary source of drinking water for the rural Ohio town.

As a result of the stories, landfill testing had been done, and among the many poisons found was arsenic--a confirmed cause of human cancer.

Curious as to whether I would find arsenic in the city's treated water, I ordered five home-testing kits from an EPA-certified lab in Cleveland, and drew samples at the county health department, a private home, city hall, an elementary school and at the newspaper.

There were traces of arsenic in every sample.

Not much, but a little--and if EPA could have its wish list, there would be zero.

Still, what the story failed to say--and should have--was: If you've been drinking the same water all your life (as most of the superintendent's elderly callers had), and don't have cancer, or diabetes or heart disease (illnesses linked to arsenic), chances are your body is ignoring this particular environmental "trigger," thanks to your own genetic makeup.

So, now, there's the dilemma over how much is too much reporting on earthquakes and bird flu.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) concur that sometime in the next quarter century, we're likely to experience an earthquake of magnitude 6.9.

A Kaiser infectious disease specialist in Oakland told me a month or so ago how he's been peppering the federal government with letters urging that nasal flu vaccine--developed with right-now knowledge of the bird flu virus--be given to every school child.

If a pandemic breaks out, he said, that's where you'll see it first. And, he said, hospitals will run out of masks, beds, Tamiflu and ventilators "within weeks."

For me, Hurricane Katrina was the wakeup call. Disasters can, and do, happen. My son, Mike, rolled his eyes when he came back from class one day to discover I had dragged up the stairs to his fraternity house an industrial-strength lidded trash can on wheels filled with gallons of water, non-perishable foods, sleeping bag, matches in baggies, a first aid kit and so on. "Mom," he said. "I don't need an earthquake kit."

Spotting a corner unoccupied by hockey gear and snowboard, I rolled the trash can into place. "Just in case," I said.

Mike shrugged.

I feel better.

Carol Bogart is the new editor of the Cupertino Courier. Contact her at cbogart@community-newspapers.com or call 408.200.1055.