Shocker! Coastal Commission Staff Opposes Toll Road

Why do reporters always use this passive style in lead paragraphs?:

The proposed Foothill South toll road would likely drive an endangered mouse to extinction, wipe out vital habitat, shatter the peace of a popular campground and even worsen global warming, according to a report by the staff of the California Coastal Commission released today.

It leads the reader to believe what they are reading is a fact, rather than an opinion. I've never understood why journalists can't simply reverse the order and use the active voice:

The Coastal Commission staff claimed today that the proposed Foothill South toll road...

That's a more honest, accurate presentation, in my opinion.

That said, this falls squarely in dog-bites-man territory. If the Coastal Commission staff had signed off on the toll road completion, then you could have knocked me over with a feather. The staff loudly telegraphed what its conclusion would be seven months ago. Any notion this is a dispassionate analysis is absurd -- theses commission staffers are enviros with government jobs and pensions. I'm surprised they didn't claim the 241 completion would cause a plague of locusts. I've no doubt the TCA had already built this into their completion strategy.

After all, the California Coastal Commission is the Natural Resources Defense Council with regulatory power. These are the same guys who claimed the drainage ditches coming from a Laguna Beach elementary school were really streams and therefore the Commission had jurisdiction over the school's expansion plans.

And it's amazing to me that while we spend hundreds of millions in ongoing battle to control rodents, when simply building a road would apparently do the job. And if I might say what the vast majority of sane people think: if that little mouse were no more, who really cares?

Comments

[wondering]

Gee, Matt, you didn't have any problem with this sentence "Preserving these areas will allow completion of the 241 in a way that is sensitive to the environment" from the OC Business Council ... sure reads like fact there, too.

Why do people use inconsistent arguments when it's convenient is a better question ...

[DP Resident]

"it's amazing to me that while we spend hundreds of millions in ongoing battle to control rodents,when simply building a road would apparently do the job."

Sounds as if we should give the Toll Road's job to Vector Control..... problem solved!