The alt weekly Willamette Week obliterates the Portland Oregonian’s highly-touted coverage of the state’s alleged meth epidemic. The Oregonian’s series is starting more and more to look like the Orlando Sentinel’s infamous series on the OxyContin “epidemic,” a series which ended with front-page corrections, an internal investigation, and a reporter out of a job.

Unfortunately, even if the Oregonian’s coverage proves to be as sensational and wholly devoid of factual support as the Sentinel series, the snowball effect it’s had on public discourse over the meth issue is likely to remain unchanged. Lawmakers never revoked the rash legislation and ill-considered policies they rushed to approve in response to the Sentinel series. In fact, years after the Sentinel renounced its series, Florida continues to persecute Richard Paey, continues its push for database presecription drug monitoring, and continues to be one of the most difficult states in the country for chronic pain patients to get high-dose opiate therapy.

I generally sit out the blogosphere’s love of “MSM” bashing. But it’s really aggravating to watch reporters and editors repeat the same mistakes in Drug War coverage, over and over again (for another example, see “crack babies” vs. “Oxy babies” vs. “meth babies”). Particularly when those mistakes lead to invasive public policy that chips away at civil liberties. A little critical thinking up front would go a long way.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 12:51 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.