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HAR 357 D*L7 rfluilruuuuilululuilruuuiluuuil TheJoan Shorenstein Center PRESS. POLITICS . PUBLICPOLICY. HarvardUniversily JohnF. KennedySchool of Government INrnorucrroN rilurilill|utul4ilillillll|4il|iltiluruiluuluril A decadeago, the Indian city of Bhopal sud- industrial accident ever recorded. " denly joined a list of infamous place names that But there the story" of Bhopal might have haunts the Twentieth Century. As this century stopped, without an enterprising group of report- dawned, the popular confidence in human reason ers, editors, legislatorsand envi,ronmentalists.In - expressedin the technologicalwonders of the last twenty yearstthe century's growing steam/ electricity, the telephone, and the inter- doubts about the human manipulation of the nal combustion engine- seemedalmost un- natural world has given rise to an environmental bounded.As this century moves toward its end, movement of unprecedentedscope and influ- wonder has been replaced with worry, and ence.By pursuing the Bhopal story, not as an limitless confidencewith concern. isolated tragedybut as part of a pattern of dan- The shattering effects of technology'suses in gersthat touches not only the relatively under- two World Wars, the haunting fears of a half- developedThird World, but reachesinto the century spent in the nuclear shadow,and con- heart of the industrialized West, those reporters stant new discoveriesabout the unintended and editors were able to help set a public agenda. consequencesof DDT, dioxin, thalidomide, and In turn, that new public agenda- about other human inventions meant to make the control of dangerouschemicals, their manufac- world safer,more useful, and more productive - ture/ transportation and storage- helped, have left indelible stains on the human imagina- through an intricate and delicate danceof tion. legislation, to passan important new set of iaws Modern researchon risk assessmentmakes in the United Statesmeant to limit those dan- clear that the public now distrusts science's gers,laws that have since been duplicated progeny.To the dismay of statisticians, when around the world. natural and man-made threats are ranked for Sanjoy Hazarika was among the first reporters dangerby averagecitizens, those made by man to reach Bhopal within hours after tragedyfirst always seem more threatening than those arising struck, and he has pursued the story that has from nature. The researcherspore over their grown out of it with the persistencethat distin- probability tables, and point out the misjudg- guishesall great reporters.As New Delhi corre- ments involved - to no avail. But the issue isn't spondent for the New York Times, he helped one simply of abstractprobabilities, in a case-by- shapehis own paper'searly coverage,and casesense. Something about the hubris of watched proudly as the paper continued its human-made dangerstouches deeply in reporting - along with a handful of others - mankind's collective imagination. Perhapsit is well after the defining moment of disasterhad the seeminginescapability of natural disasters, passed. their senseof being associatedwith forcesIarger As a Fellow of the foan ShorensteinCenter on than humankind - versus the perverse the Press,Politics and Public Policy, Hazarlka inventednessof man-maderisks - that touches steppedback to examine the effectsof press the chord that warns us that we are defying laws coverageof the Bhopal disasternot only on not meant to be challenged.Perhaps it is the gulf public awarenessof technology's dangers,but of of mistrust left by the misplaced certainty that its aftermath when a similar disasternearly the scientists themselvesfostered, by promising occurredhere in the United States.Combining no ill effects.Whatever the reason,the di- extensive interviewing with careful reconstruc- chotomy of fear persists. tion of chronologies,he revealshow the Bhopal The Faustian dimensions of the bargain we disasterultimately led to important new public have made with Progresswas never clearer than checks on a misplaced technological freedom.In in Bhopalon the morning of December3,1984. doing so, he castsimportant new light on the While citizens of that city slept, a silent, invis- intersection between technology, the public ible cloud spreadout among them, carriedby the interest, and the role of reporting. morning breezes.It came from the Union Car- bide plant meant to process fertlltzer for the Richard Patker country's Green Revolution; instead, it killed Senior Fellow, |oan ShorensteinCenter on the more than 4,000 and hospitalized 200,000more. Press,Politics and Public Policy It achieved, in a century filled with achieve- fohn F. Kennedy School of Government ments, a landmark of sorts: the worst single Harvard Univetsity htsNNEDYSCHOOL OF GOVERNMEI$T Li*RAft 1 FROM BHOPAL TO SUPERFUND: The News Media and the Environment INTRODUCTION for India: that summer, hundreds had died in a The first news of the Bhopal disasterlanded in Central Government crackdown on Sikh extrem- New Delhi early on December3,1984.I was at ists at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the the NewYork Times bureau when an Indian holiest shrine of the Sikh faith. A few months gunned news agency ran a flash on the incident, saying later, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was that scoreshad died in a gasleak and many more down by two of her Sikh guards, angeredby the were iniured. It was not immediately clear what assaulton the temple. In consequentriots, more had causedit - even a claim by Sikh extrem- than 3,000 Sikhs were battered and burned to ists that they had blown it up drew some public- death in Northern India, most of them in New gas rty - but it was soon establishedthat the city Delhi. The disaster briefly interrupted a general had been overwhelmed by toxic fumes from a campaign for elections called by Indira Union Carbide pesticide plant. Gandhi's untested son and successor/Rajiv. As the toll mounted by the hour and reporters Someimages endure for life. And for me, there caught planes, trains or just drove there, it is one that is a constant reminder of the horror of became clear that this was no ordinary tragedy those days. but a cataclysmic event. Bhopal beganto force In the state-run Hamidia Hospital, the main peopleacross the world, at least briefly, and focus of the battle to savelives during those policymakers in industry and the environment/ traumatic weeks, I walked into a roomful of glucose at greaterlength, to re-examine the paradigm of frightened children, with drips on their gasping development and the relevance of certain tech- arms and oxygen masks on thefu faces, nologies. f.or air, turning restlesslyon soiled beds,unable The unthinkable had come to pass,forcing the to understand what was happening to them and asking of the question: Can it happenhere? even more frightened by the helplessnesson the "What happenedin 1984 at one plant in one facesof their parents and doctors. Indian city prompted a worldwide reexamination The benefits of technology are not worth that price of industrial policy and practice,"r saysSheila anywhere, artymore. fasanof{, of the Program on Science,Technology and Society at Cornell University, who has edited a set of essayson the Bhopal disasterand AN EVENT HAS HAPPENED the community right to know. Edmund Burke once said, "An event has Bhopal would seizethe attention of the world happened upon which it is difficult to speak and and hold it firmly for some days.The disaster impossible to be silent." He could have been lent itself to front-pagecopy and television speakingof Bhopal. footage.There were dramatic figures on center Nine days after the world's worst industrial stage:a giant American multinational corpora- disaster,back in the United States,Rep. Henry tion struck by calamity, doctors desperately Waxman (D-California) called a specialmeeting trying to save lives, the images of blinded, gassed of the subcommittee on Health and the Environ- victims, of relatives and friends searchingfor one ment of the House of Representativesto order another, of bodies laid out on the ground because with those words. the main mortuary was full, of funeral pyres "What happened in India was a terrible, lighting the night sky. The people of Bhopal terrible tragedy of a magnitude that is difficult spoke of grief, incomprehension,fear and aimless for us to grasp. Out of this tragedy we all must anger. make sure that an accident such as happened in Reportersworked the phones,hammered out Bhopal ... will not be repeatedanywhere ... As copy for stuttering telex machines and stayed up horrible as Bhopal is, we must face it and learn late every night to file copy {nothing new for from it," Waxman added. most reporters).A few hours of exhaustedsleep His words - spoken at a state college at merged into another rushed day of travel, inter- Institute, West Virginia, where the subcommit- views, meeting and writing in time for deadlines. tee was meeting - were especiallyresonant, for Bhopal came at the end of a nightmarish year they werespoken a short distancefrom a Union Sanioy Hazafika 1 Carbide pesticideplant. The factory used the ally have an impact on the laws and regulations same chemicals that had erupted in a gascloud that were later passedto insure better chemical thousandsof miles away.Union Carbide had safety? perhaps shut the Institute Iactory to allow federal inspec- The media's role in this caseis the free- tors to conduct safetYaudits. most difficult to measure:by nature, it is a hard to Out of that meeting, where lawmakers and floating agent that is event-specificand is leadersof