Dear Editors of Plumas Sun, Bay Nature, and Grist Magazines,
This is in regards to the article “Unburned” written by Tanvi Gupta and Jane Braxton Little that has been published in your outlets:
https://plumassun.org/2025/09/21/unburned/
We were interviewed for this article by Tanvi Gupta on Dec. 13th 2024, as our organization Feather River Action! is one of the 3 plaintiff groups suing the Forest Service over the US Forest Service’s so-called 400+ acre “Community Protection Project.” This project would be a disaster for climate, community safety and the integrity of the forest, and we provided a great deal of relevant evidence to back this up. Yet the content and summary of this information — even the identity of our groups— was scrubbed from the final article.
Your publications failed to meet minimum journalistic ethical standards set out by the Society of Professional Journalists by: selectively leaving out relevant and crucially important scientific studies, oversimplifying and falsifying the narrative to support your own pre-conceptions, and failing to to be responsive to correction requests. See below a line by line explanation of these ethical breaches (SPJ ethical guidelines in bold).
We demand you take down this inaccurate, poorly reported opinion piece masquerading as actual journalism, and rewrite it to comply with the journalist’s code of ethics. There is clearly an agenda at work here, and your readers deserve better than propaganda and lies, particularly about an issue so critical to public safety and climate stability. My family’s house is situated next to where they want to bring heavy mechanical logging equipment and open up the (currently quite moist and dense) forest to drying wind and sun, which according to the science I am presenting, is likely to endanger my family by reducing our timeframe to evacuate in a wildfire emergency. This is not only a theoretical issue for us, it is highly personal.
The kind of misinformation presented in this article cannot stand unchallenged. Please take it down and add crucial information from the other side, in order to fulfill your publication’s obligation to behave ethically as journalists.
We would be happy to meet you (including out in the forest that is planned to be poisoned and masticated) and provide additional information to make this story balanced.
Thank you for your consideration.
Josh
According to the SPJ, journalists should:
Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.
There were multiple errors in this piece, and despite communicating these to the Editor of the Sun Jane Little, they still have not been fixed. There are 3 (not 2) environmental groups suing the Forest Service. In addition, the article incorrectly identified me personally as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, whereas it is our group, Feather River Action, that is one of 3 plaintiff groups. I sent multiple e-mails to request a correction and nothing was done until I contacted the funder of the article, the March Conservation Fund. The article also still incorrectly suggests that the Forest Service has held public meetings, when in fact they have held zero in-person public meetings for the public on this project, which can be verified by contacting the USFS. The article states that public comment periods are “years-long” when in fact the public comment period for Forest Service projects is 45 days. These are just some of the examples of sloppy and error-prone reporting that seems not to have been fact checked.
Provide context. Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story.
Someone who reads the article should be able to understand what the motivation of Feather River Action / John Muir Project/ Plumas Forest Project was in terms of why we filed this lawsuit, and yet this is invisible in the article, despite the fact that we clearly stated these reasons on the phone and via follow up e-mails. The story misrepresents and oversimplifies the facts and leaves out critical context related to the project’s opposition. In particular, the fact that NOT ONE WORD was mentioned about defensible space and home hardening, which are widely recognized as the critical actions to take to protect lives and communities, is an indication that the full context of this story is twisted and contorted beyond recognition.
Gather, update and correct information throughout the life of a news story.
See above. The Sun editorial board has dragged their feet on making corrections, refused to meet with me, and declined to include highly relevant information about the article’s subject.
Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources.
The article initially failed to identify the group I am associated with (unique among all sources cited) and continues to leave out the names of the other two groups. The excuse I was given by the Plumas Sun editorial board is that “there isn’t enough space” for this information. This is selective reporting, without an honest justification.
Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.
If you are covering this topic then you have a professional obligation to accurately cover the issue. Failure to do so is neither courageous or vigilant.
Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
It is clear that the authors’ strongly held views strongly influenced both who they spoke with (apparently 46 pro-project sources and 1 anti-project source- us). Ms. Little sent me an e-mail stating, “We may never agree on the science or many of the particulars.” This indicates that her strongly held belief blocked any consideration of the facts that we raised (or any facts that could be raised in the future). A professional journalist would not allow their personal feelings to influence what is covered and what is not, they would leave it to the reader to make that decision. This paternalistic, un-curious reporting does a disservice to the community.
Recognize a special obligation to serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government.
By refusing to include points from our written objection, or any substantive points raised by those opposed to the project, the Sun/ Bay Nature/ Grist failing in their “special obligation to serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government.” The article left out any mention of the massive herbicide poisoning that is planned as part of this project, and fails to take a critical view of the claim that underburning would be widespread. Simply take a look at the map provided and notice how little actual burning is planned. This is in direct conflict with, and undermines the title and basis of the article.
Provide access to source material when it is relevant and appropriate.
We provided to Tanvi Gupta both our objection as well as an op-ed I wrote for the Plumas News- see:
https://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/CPP-DN-2-Objection-2-12Dec24.pdf
Readers of this article would benefit from being able to click on these links to understand the other side of the story. We believe these links, and even the names of our organizations, were left out intentionally to deprive readers of an alternative perspective on this project, in order to push forward a pro-logging agenda and oversimplify the subject material. This is not journalism, it’s something else.
Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience. Seek sources whose voices we seldom hear.
The Sun has, from day one, refused to publish letters to the editor or opinion pieces submitted by readers. That is their decision to make, though we have repeatedly reminded them of their ethical obligation to the public to publish public opinion. This makes it even more important that contrary opinions get accurately covered in news articles. We feel absolutely betrayed by the lack of substantive coverage of our lawsuit. It also puts our safety at risk as environmental advocates when the public does not have access to accurate information regarding our viewpoints and the solid scientific evidence behind them (particularly with regard to the safety of communities in a wildfire). Activists have been targeted for their activities, and misleading coverage only fuels this irrational hatred, particularly salient in today’s climate of political violence.
This article fails to meet the Sun’s stated goal of providing “fact-based, and unbiased coverage on matters of public interest and concern in the region.” This is not “trusted community coverage” but shameless propaganda and fake news.
The authors apparently relied virtually exclusively on sources who are active recipients of millions of US Forest Service dollars. It is not surprising, then that they would praise the project. Upton Sinclair said, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting.
This was not done, and it is abundantly clear that reporter bias in favor of logging heavily shaped the reporting, influencing who the authors interviewed and what they chose to write about.
Label advocacy and commentary.
In this case, an advocacy and commentary piece was inaccurately passed off as actual journalism. Notice the subheading: “The only way to protect a forest and its communities from the next megafire is to burn it—intentionally.” This is an opinion statement, not a statement of fact. A real news piece would have said “Mr. X claims…the only way to protect a forest….” This misleading opinion piece is full of commentary and advocacy for the authors’ chosen political views. What it is not is journalism.
Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
We’ve asked the Plumas Sun for a list of their major donors and corporate funders, but this has not been made available to us. We suspect that the Sun/ Bay Nature/ Grist have undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage.
Again, given the slanted biased nature of this “reporting” and the effort given to scrubbing any opposing substantive viewpoint, we suspect there are special interests who may not be happy with any exposure at all given to the opponents of this project. Yet, democracy and open dialogue require that readers have access to information that supports different conclusions than the article promotes, in order to make up their mind on the subject.