Access Utah

For decades, Walter Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Millions across the nation welcomed him into their homes, first as a print reporter for the United Press on the front lines of World War II, and later, in the emerging medium of television, as a host of numerous documentary programs and as anchor of the CBS Evening News, from 1962 until his retirement in 1981.

In the first test in the nation of an “Ag Gag” law, a Utah woman was recently charged for using her cell phone to film a slaughterhouse. Charges against Amy Meyer were subsequently dropped. Under Utah’s law (H.B. 187) passed in 2012, it is illegal to film an agricultural operation while trespassing or entering the premises on false pretenses. Meyer says that she became an animal rights activist and vegan after learning about the conditions in factory farms and that people deserve to know where their food is coming from. <--break->Supporters of the law say that these secret recordings do nothing to help the public and that if a person suspects wrongdoing at an agricultural operation the proper step is to contact law enforcement.

On Tuesday’s Access Utah we’ll revisit a conversation from January with journalist Ioan Grillo, who has written about Mexican narcotraffickers for the past decade, even interviewing members of the cartels and their death squads. He says that “El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands from bullet-ridden barrios to marijuana-growing mountains.”

As we head towards summer, we’re talking books on Monday’s Access Utah. What are you reading now? What’s on your summer reading list? We look forward to your suggestions for children, young adults and adults. Our guests will include Margaret Brennan Neville from The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Andy Nettell from Back of Beyond Books in Moab and Catherine Weller from Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City. They’ll talk about their current favorites and books being published soon that they’re excited about.

The Boy Scouts of America is proposing a compromise. They are prepared to allow gay youths to join, while continuing to bar gay leaders. BSA is preparing to vote on the proposal later this month. The plan has received the backing of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BSA’s top sponsoring organization.

Hunter Lovins, President of Natural Capitalism Solutions, will make the business case for sustainability on Wednesday’s Access Utah. Trained as a sociologist and lawyer, Lovins is a professor of sustainable business management at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Bard College, and Denver University. She gave the keynote address at the recent Intermountain Sustainability Summit in Ogden.

In the late 1940s Helmuth Hubener, a Mormon teenager, decided to leave Hitler’s Youth and confront the Nazi regime and his church leaders. Eventually, he was excommunicated from his church and became one of the youngest opponents of the Third Reich to be executed. We’ll examine the conflict of conscience occasioned among Mormons by the extreme circumstances of the Third Reich; and consider the question articulated by German novelist Gunther Grass: Why did [Hubener] know and I didn’t know?

One in three adults in the U. S., and one in five children, is clinically obese. In his new book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us” Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss argues that many of the big companies in the processed food industry are at least partly to blame.

A clean and abundant water supply is the most pressing issue facing our society today. Joining Sheri Quinn on the program is Utah State University water quality expert Nancy Mesner. She works with state agencies to ensure our watersheds remain healthy into the future.

Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, argues in his new book “The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise” that the American traditions of entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, and upward mobility have been weakened in recent years by an explosion in the size of government and a move towards redistributing wealth rather than rewarding merit. He argues that free enterprise requires a moral defense based on the ideals of earned success, equality of opportunity, charity, and basic fairness.