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I had another experience with reading a potent story and getting all worked up about nothing. While this is a long read, I'd love to have some feedback on what you think about online news today and how it might seem to do just as much bad as good. I chose this article because the emotion was strong and the population of responses seems small enough for me to get some sort of grapple on it. Plus, you don't necessarily need a lot of background information to be moved by the article and the size of the event is small and easier to study. Here's a recap on the ACCRC drama that happened around the middle of September and some links for you to inform yourselves:
An interesting issue bubbled up in California recently over a recycling center called "Alameda County Computer Recycling Center" (ACCRC). The article I'll be referring to ( Local Recycle & Reuse Hits a Bureaucratic Roadblock ) comes at the heels of a small 2 minute video ( CNN hero video ) which hails the progress of the recycling center and gives insight into the charitable goals of the ACCRC. The specific issue at hand is that the recycling center did one additional thing with the materials which the local governing body found non-compliant with the standards they held the facility under. ACCRC was making a small museum.
An inspector from the Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency (or DTSC) filed a compliance demand after a recent inspection which requires the center to get rid of the materials in the museum, or face a "shut down". Now, after reading statements from the article such as that, a lot of people responded (particularly due to some minor "slashdotting") and tons of misinformation got thrown about. For instance, there wasn't a threat of being shut down, per se, but the fine for not complying with the DTSC would have been impossible to pay. My source for this information is the blog ( Aftermath Technologies ) of the owner of the charity recycling center. James Burgett informs us that the issue is clearing up.
Apparently the whole problem is that the DTSC wants a resolution to the laws in place that won't leave a loophole in the mix which would allow other less amiable (as in greedy or dubious) businesses to hold on to hazardous inventory. They don't have a problem with the recycling center inasmuch as that (or so the claim seems to be put that way). Yet it does beg the question of why they didn't want to resolve the issue ethically as much as when people started writing. I'm keeping this summary brief, so please inform yourselves at your leisure with the links above and your favorite search engine.
When I read about how a good citizen had been treated like that, I was really ready to make a whole post in how people should get more involved in supporting charity and so forth. This really is a troubling issue. But when I read how the case between the DTSC and the ACCRC was being cleared up and the truth behind the issue, it just heaped all that emotion back into the furnace. Now I feel like that article mislead me and was written irresponsibly. I'm disappointed that the article has done such a thing as inflate the issue at hand in order to attract attention. I'm aware that it might have taken that kind of writing to get changes done. I want to side with the writer because indeed it appears that things are going well, but I've seen enough events get blown a little out of proportion without any such writing. He's done more for James than I can see any other group immediately did, and I have the utmost respect for that. But the writer and hopefully now the readers will be aware that once again, things get a out of hand quickly when you want help from the internet.
James states on his blog that the help turned into a bit of a tussle and he had to go so far as turning off comments on his blog to anonymous people and wrote several blog posts to clarify and dissolve misunderstandings. This happens to news so frequently that most people are used to it, and it's a very disgusting fact now that we must search through blogs, comments, and several articles to get the truth. Perhaps it's wiser trying to not so much avoid emotion since it is potent and useful, but to write in the constant awareness that if you publish something, several thousand people might read it even if you only expected a handful of readers.
I'm also sure many of you find this to be nothing new. Yet if it keeps happening (not here, necessarily, but on the internet in general), it's worth saying it again. If only just to keep one more article from causing a ruckus and wasting a lot of people's time when there could be a much more rational and organized result. There's no way a writer can crush these kinds of things, but it will always help to persuade the audience in a more balanced manner. It really isn't hard to get attention anymore, but it's even harder to keep that attention focused on the right stuff.
