Power failure?

The headline on your editorial "False Fronts: Why to Look Behind the Label" (OR, July/August) irresponsibly twisted the facts surrounding the formation of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

From the outset, the Nuclear Energy Institute informed journalists interested in the coalition

that co-chairs Patrick Moore and Christine Todd Whitman would be compensated financially for their time and expertise. The fact that OR finds something devious in this transparency--hence the headline "False Fronts"--makes one question the true motivation behind the editorial. Certainly there has been nothing "false" behind the formation or the positioning of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and its co-chairs.

If CJR'S editors don't like what they read on the label, that's certainly their right. But those views don't give them license to concoct irregularities where they don't exist.

Scott Peterson

Vice president, Nuclear Energy Institute

Washington, D.C.

Your editorial criticizes journalists for failing to refer to the group's funding by a nuclear power industry association (which my agency represents), and makes a highly critical effort to discredit the coalition's co-chairs, former New Jersey Governor and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Greenpeace founder Dr. Patrick Moore.

But if CJR'S issue is with press coverage, then why the hatchet job on Whitman and Moore? They each, through their independent consultancies, have the power to pick and choose their causes, and each has been completely transparent about funding sources and relationships with the Nuclear Energy Institute and the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton. And with CASEnergy's funding fully disclosed on media materials and during a high-profile press launch at the National Press Club earlier this year, CJR's insinuation that the coalition is somehow "working the press" rings hollow.

As a media watchdog, wouldn't a more constructive role for CJR be to present a discussion of the group's newsworthiness? Whitman and Moore, each reasonably "green," are leading more than 350 organizations and individuals from across the political spectrum to support the increased use of nuclear energy, at a time when the country's politicians and their constituents are clamoring for clean, affordable energy. Sure sounds newsworthy to me.

But what CJR seems to require of journalists is not just news judgment, but a reflection of CJR'S own attitudes about nuclear energy and its properties.

If the editors' real beef is with nuclear power or its viability as an energy source, then why not a full airing of your concerns, instead of an exercise in shooting the messenger?

Frank Mankiewicz

Vice chairman Hill & Knowlton

Washington, D.C.

The editors respond: As our editorial stated, "We have no position on nuclear power." We do, however; have a firm position on disclosing political agendas and financial ties: we believe that to be fair, such disclosures must be full. Our criticism, therefore, was directed not at the industry or its representatives, who after all were only doing their jobs, but, rather, at the news media, who were not doing theirs.