Canadian Railroads > PBS news hour 23, July 2014

The PBS News Hour program last night was severe disappointment
with regard to a relevent discussion of the crude oil mess; forgive the pun.

Here's the link to the show's home page. The thumbnail for the Wednesday show is below the large picture

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/videos/

leonz Wrote:
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> The PBS News Hour program last night was severe
> disappointment
> with regard to a relevent discussion of the crude
> oil mess; forgive the pun.


Care to elaborate?

leonz Wrote:
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> The PBS News Hour program last night was severe
> disappointment
> with regard to a relevant discussion of the crude
> oil mess; forgive the pun.

I'm not sure what part you found disappointing. For a general news program it seemed like non-sensationalized, factually accurate piece of reporting. Secretary Foxx explained the DOT's position quite clearly. Indeed he was careful to explain the complexity of the issue and the need to consider downstream impact. The only thing I would like to have heard him say, but didn't, is that we need to assess the relative risk of other modes of transport for Bakken oil alongside those for rail. I certainly have no problem with efforts to make rail shipment safer.

Dave

leonz Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The PBS News Hour program last night was severe
> disappointment
> with regard to a relevent discussion of the crude
> oil mess; forgive the pun.


I do not presume to intrude on US politics, but as a former broadcaster, I can say that this was a very well-balanced piece.
The reporter covered the issues as well as possible, considering the time constraints imposed by television. At over 9 minutes, this was a much-more in-depth piece than you would get on a "commercial" network. The relatively lengthy interview with the Transportation Secretary allowed for follow-up questions which you do not normally see on television.

As a Canadian, I wish our CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - government owned, but operated at arms-length) were more like PBS and less like the other commercial networks!

Will MacKenzie
Dundas, ON

My $0.02 is they did a decent job presenting the problem and where they were going with a solution. They also presented the idea of screening/refining/removing the extremely volatile part of the Bakken Crude at the loading site, which is a pretty recent development.

Scary part is that we've discussed all these points on TrainOrders just after the Lac Magantic incident, then re-hashed it with the BNSF Casselton double track incident. The News Hour also noted the 1 year anniversary.

I very much like the PBS Newshour format and note that the structure and format has been around for a while as the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour. After their retirement the content or selection of the stories has been getting kinda soft, it's moving less political drama and more Human style, perhaps BBC style stories.

Groupees will know that Robert MacNeil is Canadian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour