Last week, in a Capitol Hill press conference featuring congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (R‑Md.) and Tom Udall (D‑N.M.), the Government Accountability Office unveiled a new report on the looming catastrophe the United States faces from “peak oil.” With gas prices up and environmental stories popping in the press, Bartlett, Udall, and the GAO had to be thinking they’d have a hit on their hands.
So, if a GAO report falls on Capitol Hill and the media ignores it, does it count as news?
I can find no coverage of the press conference or the report in either the New York Times or the Washington Post. The only mention of it on either of those papers’ websites is in a transcript of an online chat session with Post politics reporter Lois Romano, wherein a reader asks if the Bartlett-Udall press conference will generate buzz. Romano’s response (in essence): What press conference?
In fairness, the report did get a bit of play: the AP moved a short story on it and the WSJ briefed it. But no one is interviewed in either story, and the two pieces have the whiff of being quickly typed up from a press release. In other words, the media decided the report didn’t merit any real attention.