In a startling break from the usual journalistic practice of refusing to call anyone a liar (instead adopting the “some people say, while others insist” style), today’s Globe flatly declares that the apparently quite effective TV ad being run by the folks against expanding the bottle bill is, well, a crock.
Advertisements with inaccurate data aid foes of wider bottle law
A barrage of critical television advertisements containing information that state statistics show is false has apparently led to a dramatic increase in opposition to a November ballot proposal to expand the state bottle law….
The opponents’ ads say that 90 percent of state residents have curbside recycling, which they use to suggest that the bottle redemption law is no longer needed.
One ad features Peggy Ayres, a former chairwoman of the Marlborough Recycling Committee, who says, “Thirty years ago, the redemption deposit was a good idea. But now with curbside recycling, it’s an idea whose time has come and passed. Ninety percent of Massachusetts residents have curbside recycling right in their communities.”
The state Department of Environmental Protection, however, says only 47 percent of Massachusetts cities and towns offer curbside recycling, reaching 64 percent of the population.
“We’ve been monitoring and tracking recycling in cities and towns, and we have the right numbers,” said David Cash, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection.
Remarkable. And what do the No-on-2 folks have to say for themselves?
After some TV stations prodded the bottle law opponents to back up their claims, the No on Question 2 campaign added a footnote to the ad with Ayres. The text, which appears for a few seconds in small print and cites the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, says, “More than 90 percent of Massachusetts residents have access to community recycling programs.”
“We’re adding a citation to further substantiate our point,” said Nicole Giambusso, a spokeswoman for the No on Question 2 campaign.
Hilariously inadequate. Access to “community recycling” is of course not at all the same as “curbside recycling.” Community recycling is often the old kind where you pack up your recyclables into bags, toss them into the back of the station wagon, and drive a few miles to a transfer station. So, this effort to “further substantiate” the 90% claim does nothing of the kind.
The pathetic part of the story, though, is that the TV stations that are raking in the dollars by running this ad are refusing to bow to reality.
Many of the TV stations that run the ads, which have been a lucrative source of income, did not return calls for comment.
Bill Fine, president and general manager of WCVB-TV, said his station would continue to air the spots. He described the ads as “what has come to pass for customary political discourse.”
“As often happens in these matters, the opposite sides of an issue use data sets that back their point of view,” he said. “The data is often subject to analysis and ultimately we cannot be the final arbiter of whose interpretation is the correct one. We leave that to the voters.”
Um … sorry, Bill, but that doesn’t work in this case. “Customary political discourse” doesn’t – or shouldn’t – include outright falsehoods. There’s no room for “analysis” as to whether 90% of MA households have curbside recycling. They don’t, and you shouldn’t be running an ad saying that they do.
So, bravo to the Globe (and reporter David Abel) for speaking clearly when the facts demanded it. And boo to WCVB and the other TV stations who are putting profits before the public good.
But these things get muddled so easily, because each side effs with the numbers and uses them misleadingly.
90% of residents have access; NO only 47% of towns, which isn’t what they said. Why is 47% reported by the journalist? What does that have to do with his article?
Ok, 90% of residents have curbside recycling; NO only 64% do, community recycling is not the same. But this kind of glosses over the fact that at least some of that difference comes from towns that have no curbside trash pickup of any kind. Which means that the recycling center is precisely as convenient as trash, exactly like in the towns that do pickup. The “fact-checking” seems to suggest otherwise.
How many towns do curbside trash, but no curbside recycling?
One thing is always certain, whenever some politician or political advocate cites a “fact” in a TV commercial during October, you can be sure that the speaker is saying something that is technically true, or near to technically true, but is said in order to deliberately mislead you. Then, if they slipped, and the “fact checkers” get in their aha!, you can be sure of exactly the same thing.
I hate October during election years.
This is what has come to pass for customary political discourse, and as someone who is in the RARE position to actually DO something about it … I … I … I’ve got to go cash this check now.
What a guy. What an inspiration.
David, it would please you to know that the numbers quoted by DEP commissioner David Cash are wrong also, according to statistics posted at the Massachusetts Municipal Solid Waste & Recycling Data page, specifically the 2012 Municipal Solid Waste & Recycling Survey Responses spreadsheet.
64% of the population has curbside recycling, 15% have drop-off recycling only, 1% have no recycling, and for the rest of 20% it is not known what kind of recycling is available.
Also, the count for the number of towns with curbside recycling is 32%, not 47%. For 35.51% towns, the state does not know what type of recycling they have. Here is my spreadsheet with the computations.
It bothers me a lot that these TV ads are misleading. But it is inexcusable for the DEP commissioner to be misleading on his own.
If anything good may come out of this, at least, hopefully the state will start collecting complete recycling data from all towns. I don’t think it is that hard: they should just add a raider to the local state aid to ask for this data from all towns, with a small dollar increase earmarked for data collection.
is it possible that your calculations are based on 2012 numbers, while the DEP Commissioner is using more current data? Not snark – I’m asking.
He cherry picked the data, just as the TV ads cherry picked their data.
Long story short, looking at combined reports for 2009-2012, 47% of towns have curbside recycling, with 78% of households in those towns (and not 64%, as the DEP Commissioner thought; his number seems to be coming from the incomplete 2012 reports).
My updated spreadsheet with 2009-2012 combined data is posted at http://lex-wiki.org/wiki/State_Politics:2014_Ballot_Question_2.