Click on the link to the right of this blog for The Joplin Independent.
As is rapidly becoming the way of journalistic life for this area, the non-mainstream media is leading the way on the important investigative stories that need to be done. Mari Winn has been doing some digging into the Moark situation and provides her readers with information which should have Neosho residents worried.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has stood by and watched while Moark has violated one environmental regulation after another and now the state agency appears poised to reward the company for its transgressions by giving it carte blanche to increase its production and increase its pollution of the area.
Perhaps I was a bit hasty with my remarks about the non-traditional media such as The Joplin Independent, The Turner Report, Lamarmo.com , Neosho Forums, Seneca Forums, and area blogs leading the way in investigate reporting. After all, it was the Neosho Daily News that footed the bill for Managing Editor Buzz Ball to fly to Roggen, Colo., to check out Moark's state-of-the-art facilities there.
After all, if Moark had paid for it, then Ball came back and wrote a glowing puff piece about the facility, that would certainly call his reporting into question, wouldn't it? I have a hard time believing that is the case, though. If such a conflict of interest existed, Ball would most certainly give his readers full disclosure. Anything else would be less than honest.