{"id":217,"date":"2015-01-06T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T15:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=217"},"modified":"2015-02-16T16:07:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T21:07:12","slug":"misrepresenting-wild-horses-at-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Misrepresenting Wild Horses At The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>

How much disclosure does the media owe its readers?\u00a0Two\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0articles illuminate the complexity of this timely question: \u201cHidden Interests, Closer to Home,\u201d<\/a> by Public Editor Margaret Sullivan (Sept. 20, 2014), and \u201cAs Wild Horses Overrun the West, Ranchers Fear Land Will Be Gobbled Up,\u201d<\/a> by\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>staff writer, Dave Philipps (Sept. 30, 2014).<\/p>\n

Sullivan\u2019s and Philipps\u2019 articles bookend a discussion about think tanks exploiting op-ed pieces (or other articles) to advance policies in a way that obscures conflicts of interest. Sullivan\u2019s article clarifies the Times\u2019 <\/em>position on this issue. She writes, \u201cFor [Times\u2019<\/em>] readers to evaluate ideas, they need to know where they\u2019re coming from \u2014 and who might be paying for them.\u201d A related corollary is that to evaluate ideas, readers also need access to accurate data and context.<\/p>\n

But Philipps\u2019 story, which appeared ten days after Sullivan\u2019s essay, accomplishes neither of these objectives. In fact, it repeatedly violates them, despite Sullivan\u2019s presentation of them as essential to the Times<\/em>\u2019 editorial mission.<\/p>\n

The relevant policy under examination is the federal government\u2019s Wild Horses and Burros program. Philipps suggests that reducing costly roundups and slaughtering horses held in captivity would fix the problem by lowering the expense of long-term holding facilities, where close to 50,000 horses now languish.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one problem: both Congress and the U.S. public oppose that \u201csolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than address the concerns of Congress, Philipps quotes a couple of self-interested Utah ranchers who predictably claim that an over-abundance of wild horses are eating their cattle out of house and home, threatening the horses\u2019 and ranchers\u2019 existence, and costing taxpayers a bundle. He adds the perspective of a sympathetic wildlife biologist and a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manager for support.<\/p>\n

An overpopulation story\u2014especially one exposing federal spending that goes against the public\u2019s interest as expressed through their elected officials\u2014is essentially a numbers story. Philipps\u2019 story, however, doesn\u2019t provide a proper accounting.<\/p>\n

The population numbers he uses\u201448,000 wild horses roaming free<\/a> compared to a maximum sustainable herd size (called Appropriate Management Level) of just 26,000<\/a>\u2014aren\u2019t reliable. These figures are BLM\u00a0estimates<\/em>. They are estimates, moreover,\u00a0that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) sharply criticized as inaccurate in a 398-page, 2013 report\u00a0(\u201cUsing Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The BLM itself\u00a0commissioned the NAS report, but Philipps, in failing to mention the study, neglects the NAS finding that BLM roundups increase horse populations (p. 5-6);\u00a0<\/em>that the BLM underutilizes fertility control (p. 303); and that conducting \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d is unproductive (p. 14).<\/p>\n

These omissions are only the tip of an iceberg of confusion. Philipps did not provide\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>readers with the relevant context. For example, readers should have known that of the 155 million acres of western rangeland that the\u00a0BLM<\/a> oversees for public grazing, 83 percent has no wild horses on it at all\u2014just privately owned cattle and sheep. The remaining 17 percent is designated as wild horse habitat, but horses share it, yet again, with privately owned livestock, which are allocated 77 percent of the forage there, according to Zachary Reichold, BLM senior wild horse and burro specialist.<\/p>\n

The BLM doesn\u2019t explicitly provide the number of privately owned livestock on public lands, but those numbers can be gleaned by visiting its\u00a0Rangeland Administration System<\/a>\u00a0(RAS) database, where public grazing allotments are tracked.\u00a0There you can learn that, in Utah\u2019s Beaver and Iron Counties\u2014where the ranchers Phillips interviews blame the horses for compromising the rangeland\u2019s health\u2014it would be a physical impossibility for horses to overrun the landscape. Notably, the RAS shows cattle and sheep there outnumbering wild horses by almost 11:1.<\/p>\n

Nationally, cattle outnumber wild horses 50:1 on BLM-managed lands, contradicting the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>claims of wild horses \u201coverrunning the West,\u201d \u201cgobbling up land,\u201d\u00a0\u201ccausing long-term damage,\u201d and fleecing taxpayers. It\u2019s true that public rangelands have deteriorated from overgrazing. But there\u2019s no evidence that wild horses are to blame.<\/p>\n

But there is evidence that livestock are. Damage caused by private livestock grazing is confirmed by watchdog groups such as Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)<\/a> and\u00a0Western Watersheds<\/a>\u2014and that\u2019s without even analyzing the immense cost to taxpayers of the federal grazing program. The issue is analyzed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Philipps also neglects to mention the massive gas development deal<\/a>\u00a0announced back in 2012 on 1.1 million acres of mixed federal, state and private land in Carbon and Sweetwater counties. This land is the Wyoming \u201ccheckerboard\u201d from which the BLM has just finished removing 1,263 horses\u2014a roundup that Philipps attended as a reporter.<\/p>\n

The BLM states that the Wyoming roundup was carried out at the request of\u00a0private<\/em>\u00a0land owners and had nothing to do with horses eating too much or being in danger of starvation. Who made that request has not been made clear. A FOIA request sent to the BLM back in April seeking that information has still not received a response (as of today).<\/p>\n

In her September 20 article, Ms. Sullivan,\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>Public Editor, notes disclosure lapses in several recent\u00a0Times <\/em>op-ed pieces and articles, quoting a reader who complains: \u201cthe NYT may be unwittingly aiding and abetting the very manipulations of public opinion and government policies that it publicly deplores.\u201d This claim could easily be made about Dave Philipps\u2019 fact-challenged, selectively reported, and lopsided article.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Both Ms. Sullivan and Mr. Philipps were asked, via e-mail, to comment on the claims in this article. They never responded. The\u00a0<\/em>New York Times\u00a0corrections desk did not respond to<\/em>\u00a0the editors’\u00a0request for corrections<\/em>\u00a0either.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How much disclosure does the media owe its readers?\u00a0Two\u00a0New York Times\u00a0articles illuminate the complexity of this timely question: \u201cHidden Interests, Closer to Home,\u201d by Public Editor Margaret Sullivan (Sept. 20, 2014), and \u201cAs Wild Horses Overrun the West, Ranchers Fear Land Will Be Gobbled Up,\u201d by\u00a0Times\u00a0staff writer, Dave Philipps (Sept. 30, 2014). Sullivan\u2019s and Philipps\u2019 articles bookend a discussion about think tanks exploiting op-ed pieces (or other articles) to advance policies in a way that obscures conflicts of interest. Sullivan\u2019s article clarifies the Times\u2019 position on this issue. She writes, \u201cFor [Times\u2019] readers to evaluate ideas, they need to know where they\u2019re coming from \u2014 and who might be paying for them.\u201d A related corollary is that to evaluate ideas, readers also need access to accurate data and context. But Philipps\u2019 story, which appeared ten days after Sullivan\u2019s essay, accomplishes neither of these objectives. In fact, it repeatedly violates them, despite Sullivan\u2019s presentation of them as essential to the Times\u2019 editorial mission. The relevant policy under examination is the federal government\u2019s Wild Horses and Burros program. Philipps suggests that reducing costly roundups and slaughtering horses held in captivity would fix the problem by lowering the expense of long-term holding facilities, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,118],"tags":[26,27,65,70,25,75,73,74,23],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-featured_carousel","tag-blm","tag-bureau-of-land-management","tag-david-philipps","tag-livestock","tag-mustangs","tag-peer","tag-ranching","tag-western-watersheds","tag-wild-horses"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SALT-WELLS-HORSES_Jennifer-Maharry.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p54Vzk-3v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dailypitchfork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}