Belated Courage

Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy about González's scoop. Indeed, sources say, ... editors discouraged the columnist from pursuing the toxic story and buckled under pressure from federal and local authorities."