TVA Leaks Damning "How to Handle the Press" Memo, um, TO THE AP

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According to the AP story, the memo replaced the word "catastrophic" with "sudden and accidental." 

From the AP (Via Knoxnews.com):
The memo was edited to remove "risk to public health and risk to the environment" as a reason for measuring water quality and the potential of an "acute threat" to fish.

A reworked description of fly ash noted it mostly "consists of inert material not harmful to the environment," while references to "toxic metals" in the ash were moved to a section on water sampling.
...
Noel Holston, a public relations specialist with the University of Georgia's Peabody journalism awards program, said it would be "hard to infer a motive to s/uch corrections and fine tunings."

But he said, "I can't imagine that anyone who sees these additions and deletions would not conclude that the final version is softer and less alarming than the earlier wording. The fact is they whittled away at this until it said something a little less frightening than what it originally said."

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This page contains a single entry by Charles Maldonado published on January 23, 2009 2:36 PM.

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