NYT Goes for TV-Style Scare Tactics: 'America's Toxic Waters'

This week the Times launched TimesCast, a daily video news program about seven minutes in length. In Tuesday's edition, senior editor Marcus Mabry unleashed some video-friendly scare tactics in setting up his talk with investigative reporter Charles Duhigg, five-and-a-half minutes into the report [1] (as posted below):

Mabry: "Charles, you spent the last year reporting on America's toxic waters, how our drinking water supply is actually not safe. The EPA, charged with keeping it safe, has not done a great job of doing that. What's changing?"

Charles Duhigg: "What we found is that basically the laws that are supposed to be protecting our waters are either out of date or aren't being enforced. And so the EPA said that they're going to do a complete overhaul, or a wide-ranging overhaul, in how they regulate safe drinking water. And as a result the water that comes from Americans' taps will be much, much cleaner and safer in the future."

The Times didn't provide any statistics on the alleged perils of American tap water.