by Christina Stevens
Most of us don't really think about the ground we walk on, the ground around us, or that underneath our homes. In Port Hope, Ontario, it's a different story.
A renowned environmentalist made headlines by saying the town should be shut down because of radioactive contamination in the soil. That it's contaminated isn't in question, the organization in charge of cleanup is looking at about 4,500 locations…and moving 1.2 million cubic metres of soil into a storage site yet to be built. It is "low level radioactive contamination" from a uranium refinery operating in the town for decades.
At issue is what that contamination means. Some residents are concerned it's cancer causing and point to fellow citizens who have had strange illnesses, but the government (and its various agencies involved) says it's not hurting anything. It's not hurting the people, not the environment, not even the workers carting it away. Both are entrenched…so where does the truth lie? It's almost impossible to know.
A fenced off area in Port Hope, Ontario.
Both cite studies, personal experience and have a "trust me I am telling the truth" tone to their message. One side says the other is fear mongering, the other suggests they (and we) are only being given half-truths and convenient answers. The challenge as a journalist doing daily news is that you don't have time for in-depth investigations, reviewing dozens of studies, scouring records and soliciting outside experts to do independent verifications of the "facts" presented to us. It would take weeks to be able to wade through it all. Only then should you, as a journalist, take a position. Without that kind of investigation, you can't "decide" which is right. All you can do is present both sides as fairly as possible and let viewers make up their own minds.
What is interesting are the comments that come in, some people sounding like they felt a little cheated, "Your story was very interesting, but at the end I didn't know who was right. I couldn't tell. Should Port Hope residents be concerned or not?"
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Believe it or not, those comments tell me I did my job today. We didn't sensationalize the story, nor did we ignore people's concerns. We told both sides and left it up to you.
That's not to say that is the end of the story. We will do the digging, keep asking the questions and demanding answers until we have the kind of information and details which warrant a specific "angle" to the story… Believe me, my curiosity is piqued and I want to know the answer just as much as you do.
Christina is one of Global National's correspondents based in Toronto.
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