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The Good News is the Bad news is Wrong.  Ben J. Wattenberg.  1984, Simon
and Schuster.
	
	A long book---432 pages.
	Easy reading.  Repetitive.
	He argues:  Environmentalists say we are poisoning environment,
		yet we are living longer than ever.  If we are poisoning
		parts of environment, it may be too soon to see results.
		He responds (p 36): maybe, but I doubt it, probably comes
		down to complicated cost-benefit calculus betw. avoiding
		unknown amts of potential harm vs engendering unknown
		amts of potential progress.  These things are not wholly
		unknowable.  More discussion needed.
	p 43 "Today the controllability and safety of DNA research are
		generally no longer questioned."  Not true, witness recent
		flap in Berkeley.
	Usually very fair and even-handed.  Not rabidly anti-anti. p51---
		"It appears that consumerist scare-mongering may have
		helped save lives."
	p 56 "...three biggest product-oriented dangers in our lives are
		mostly VOLUNTARY" smoking, drinking and driving.  I don't
		think driving is all that voluntary.  He says drinking
		while driving is voluntary as is not using seat belt.
		Doesn't say what percentage of total deaths are due to
		these things.  Also, deaths due to drinking while driving
		include those who are not drunk, but are hit by drunk
		drivers.  Further, those deaths are probably already in
		the statistic on those `drinking kills'.
	p 58---"Tens of thousands of Americans will die because they are
		driving in smaller, lighter cars---cars demanded by the
		people who had seized the moral high ground of risk
		abatement!"  Garbage.  Those people are driving smaller
		lighter cars because they want them for economic, not
		moral reasons.
	p141---footnote.  He is not aware that Dagwood and Blondie is a
		comic strip appearing to the present day in almost every
		newspaper in the country.
	He doesn't discuss the definition of poverty. (Defined as a
		certain income level---most people consider people making
		somewhat more as being poor.)
	p206---It's not so hard to stay in high school without dropping out
		as it apparently once was.  Grade inflation encourages
		people.
	p209 figures on teacher/student ratios are suspect.  I was never
		in such a small class in secondary school.
	p216  I bet many `whiz kids' got their hi-tech education outside
		public school.
	p216  There are reasons to go to school in the US other than
		educational excellence.
	p 217  These preschools are private.
	Do-It-Yourself Democracy--II.  Summary of chapter: ALL is for the
                BEST in this BEST of all possible worlds!  This chapter
		is just too blithe.
	p 361---"media myth that Viet vets were scorned"  This may be a
		myth, but isn't it one held and promulgated by many of
		said vets?  What if you and I and Dan Rather never had a
		bad thought about Vietnam veterans; if Vietnam veterans
		all met one or two people who treated them like scum; if
		veterans feared to admit they were veterans, etc; if all
		veterans who talked to the media then said: They treated
		me like scum and ignored me?  Wouldn't we get the stories
		we've been getting?  Would it be a media myth?
	p 365---what means "The Soviets probably overplayed their hand
		when they marched into Afghanistan"?
	Media chapter.  1) It's often more important to know the bad
		news than the good news.  Yes, bad news is photogenic,
		but also good news is boring.   How are you?  If the 
		answer is `fine', no one wants the details.  If the
		answer is `tubercular'---could you be more explicit?
		2)  This is not just how the media are.  This is how, for
		example, gossip works.  I bet Wattenberg tells more people
		about his tubercular friends than his healthy ones.
	pp 399-400 poll.  Are people fully aware of media's `Bad News
		Bias', as indicated by poll, or are they credulous and
		unquestioning as gloomily suggested earlier in chapter?
		
Conclusion: book interesting, basically sound, too long.  I do not find
contents insanely startling.

In my opinion, one of the book's basic assertions is mistaken.  It
supposes, and I haven't seen any argument, that the chain of causality
in excessive environmental laws is the following.  Bad news bias by
media → mistaken views of public → excessive response by lawmakers.
This ignores the role of environmentalism as politics --- the existence
of organizations and people for which environmental extremism is the
road to self-esteem, power and personal prosperity.  As long as these
interests exist, books like Wattenberg's will have limited influence.
In a certain sense, the problem isn't error; it's sin.
After all, the bad news bias of the media has always existed, although
it was at one time limited by the connections of the media owners
with other commercial interests.  Now that these connections are
much weakened --- perhaps by the increasing specialization of society ---
the owners share the bias of the reporters, editors, etc.