http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/22301/
Published on December 22, 2006
deaths
Jim Sibbison died Dec. 16, 2006
Amherst - Jim Sibbison, who forged a second career as a muckraking environmental journalist after retiring from the
federal government in 1982, died peacefully on Dec. 16 in Hadley. He would have turned 91 in January.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Sibbison was a graduate of Case-Western University. He also attended Hamilton College.
During World War II, he was a Navy officer on a destroyer, the Charles F. Hughes, in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and
Pacific. On leave in New Orleans he met the love of his life, Rita Eisemann, whom he married in 1945 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
After the war, Mr. Sibbison joined The Associated Press, reporting first from Columbus, Ohio, and then from Cleveland,
where he covered the notorious murder trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard. In 1953 the AP transferred him to its Washington,
D.C., bureau, where he covered Congress. Around 1960 he left private journalism to work for a series of federal
agencies, beginning as an investigator for Arkansas Sen. John McClellan, whose committee's examination of
connections between labor unions and organized crime resulted in the expulsion of the Teamsters and two other unions
from the AFL-CIO.
For the last 10 years of his federal career, Mr. Sibbison was a press officer for the Environmental Protection
Agency, where he gained insight into the toxic alliance of self-interest forged among government agencies,
the media and the industries the agencies were supposed to regulate. After his retirement, he used this insight
and his expertise in primary-source investigation - I.F. Stone and Lincoln Steffens were his heroes - to write a series of
muckraking pieces on environmental topics.
In 1988, in an article published in the Columbia Journalism Review titled "Dead fish and red herrings: How
the EPA pollutes the news," he revealed how EPA reports of improvement in pollution levels were a
deliberate attempt to mislead and pacify the public. This article, and another appearing the following year in
The Nation, "Revolving Door at the EPA," won awards from Sonoma State University's "Project Censored"
when Mr. Sibbison was in his 70s. Throughout the 1980's, he also wrote regular columns on public health and the
environment for the British peer-reviewed medical journal, The Lancet. At the age of 90 he published a blog, "Jim
Sibbison on Media Deception," on which he posted three new essays ( http//sibbisonmediadeception.blogspot.com ).
Mr. Sibbison was a devoted amateur musician throughout his life. He practiced daily until shortly before his death and
enjoyed playing four-hand piano with his former music teacher, Greg Hayes, of Goshen, and with his friend Judith
Williams, of Greenfield. In his last months, Mr. Sibbison took up drawing, spending hours focusing on the human face
and trying to capture its essence.
Of all his interests, politics was Mr. Sibbison's life-long obsession. A radical and curmudgeon to the bone, he read The
New York Times and watched CNN with an angry focus that never faded throughout the years. He hated war, and he
hated those who waged war without paying any of the costs.
In 1982, after retiring from the government, Mr. Sibbison and his wife relocated from Washington, D.C., to Amherst. He is
survived by his wife, Rita; their daughter, Wendy, of Greenfield; their granddaughter, Maisie, of Burlington, Vt.; his
brother, Bob, of San Diego, Cali.; his sister, Agnes, of Tampa, Fla.; and many nieces and nephews. A memorial service
will be held at a later date.
JIM SIBBISON
Died December 16, 2006 at age 91
For the last 10 years of his federal career, Mr. Sibbison was a press officer for the Environmental Protection
Agency, where he gained insight into the toxic alliance of self-interest forged among government agencies,
the media and the industries the agencies were supposed to regulate.