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CNN: The Most Trusted Name In... Corporate BS And Misinformation
Posted by Pile
(10301 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[Environment] |
 According to MediaMatters, CNN has crossed the line. On Wednesday, the self-proclaimed "Most Trusted Name in News" aired an hour-long special on Global Warming that was anything BUT news.
The special, "EXPOSED: The Climate of Fear," on CNN Headline News was hosted by Glenn Beck, whose long history of factual distortions on Global Warming have been well documented... |
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Indeed, Beck's special began with him saying, "[T]his is not a balanced look at global warming." Of the 10 people featured on the program, eight have ties to the energy industry, have spread misinformation about Global Warming, or both. The other two did not address the science behind Global Warming, but rather ways to change energy consumption habits.
* Marlo Lewis: a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an institution largely funded by the energy industry. As The Washington Post reported on March 19, 2006, CEI, "which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says ExxonMobil Corp. is a 'major donor' largely as a result of its effort to push that position."
* Dr. Timothy Ball: a climatologist who is also the chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a Canadian environmental think tank whose three-person board of directors includes an executive of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto-based lobby firm that specializes in 'energy, environment and ethics." Timothy Egan, High Park Advocacy Group' president, is "a registered lobbyist for the Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association."
* Patrick J. Michaels: a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, author of two books on global warming, The Satanic Gases and Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, and editor of World Climate Report, a biweekly newsletter on climate studies funded in large part by the coal industry. According to a 1998 article by Institute for Public Accuracy executive director Noah Solomon, the Cato Institute has received financial support from energy companies -- including Chevron Companies, ExxonMobil Corp., Shell Oil Company, and Tenneco Gas, as well as the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation, and Atlantic Richfield Foundation.
* Patrick Moore: a former Greenpeace activist who has served as a corporate consultant since 1991. His public relations firm, Greenspirit Strategies, specializes in strategic communications for mining, fossil fuels, logging, and nuclear power industry clients. As the Center for Media and Democracy reported, Moore's "past work with Greenpeace has proved an irresistible hook for many reporters, even though his association with that group ended in 1986."
* Chris Horner: senior fellow for the energy industry-funded CEI, author of the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) (Regnery, February 2007), and has appeared on Beck on at least three separate occasions to attack the "hysterical movement" of environmental activists warning of the threats of global warming (April 23, April 5, and March 21), as Media Matters has noted.
* John Christy: the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and Alabama state climatologist. Christy and fellow University of Alabama professor Roy Spencer co-authored a 2003 global warming study based on extensive data from weather satellites. Their report, which concluded that the troposphere had not warmed in recent decades, was ultimately found to have significant errors. The New York Times reported that when their miscalculations were taken into account, the data used in their study actually showed warming in the troposphere.
* Bjorn Lomborg: a "political scientist" at the Copenhagen Business School who purported to conduct a "non-partisan analysis" of environmental data in the hope of offering the public and policymakers a guide for "clear-headed prioritization of resources to tackle real, not imagined, problems." His conclusion was that the concerns of scientists regarding the world's environmental problems -- including global warming -- were overblown. But in January 2002, Scientific American ran a series of articles from four well-known environmental specialists that lambasted Lomborg's book for "egregious distortions," "elementary blunders of quantitative manipulation and presentation that no self-respecting statistician ought to commit," and sections that were "poorly researched and ... rife with careless mistakes."
* David R. Legates: an associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. His 2006 report, "Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts," was published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank that has received substantial funding from energy interests such as ExxonMobil Corp.
» Take Action! Contact CNN today!
The only thing "EXPOSED" by Beck's Global Warming spectacular and by CNN's willingness to air it was Beck's aversion to the broad international scientific consensus and CNN's eroding credibility as a news outlet.
I urge you to contact CNN and tell them this issue is too important to get the facts wrong and mislead the American people -- they must stop airing global warming misinformation today!
Beck's special is the very type of program CNN should be investigating, not promoting. As a news organization, it is irresponsible of CNN and Headline News to allow Glenn Beck to impugn their credibility by spreading misinformation. If we don't speak up now, the road will be paved for similar "specials" of questionable credibility to be aired on CNN and other networks in the future.
Please, act today. Remind CNN that it is a cable news network and not another cog in the conservative noise machine. |
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Wow
Posted by Scott on 2007-05-04 16:07:44 | I thought you were going to show an "equal opportunity" side by criticizing the liberal cable news outlet CNN, but no -- you were only going after the only conservative face on that channel. Nice.
A cheer for intellectual diversity! (...the only kind that isn't promoted.) |
| Posted by Pile on 2007-05-05 09:52:28 | Lies are lies, liberal or conservative...
People like you who have to label everyone either as conservative or liberal do a great disservice to those of us who look at things on a case-by-case basis. I don't watch glenn beck so i have no idea which hand he masturbates with.
Besides, who's liberal on CNN anyway? better yet, what is liberal? these days it's a bad word used by conservatives so it's meaningless. CNN is basically media whores and corporate whores. Liberal/conservative is kind of irrelevant except to small-minded, desperate, ignorant people who want to shoot the messenger as a way of ignoring the message. |
It's all a conspiracy
Posted by radio guy on 2007-05-11 08:11:10 | | I worked with some fierce conservatives at my last job and I got a kick out of hearing all the conspiracy theories of the "liberally biased" things in this country. It was all about the liberal media, public schools, universities, Hollywood, etc. It always seemed odd to me that they made it sound like they were being attacked by (essentially) the rest of the country. It never occurred to them that that's just the way the country was. In a way, all of these institutions represent the bigger thoughts and ideas in the country, if for no other reason than that's what's bringing in the cash. Does anyone honestly think that these millionaire fat cats would hesitate to change their programming in a second and cater to conservatives if they knew it would make them richer? The thought of a "liberal media" has always been funny to me. I think anyone can see that there is a leftist slant on many of these news networks, but that's because these places are businesses and they need to cater to the majority so they can bring in the bucks. |
| Posted by Pile on 2007-05-17 16:11:18 | | The problem is, "slanting left" these days, means anything that isn't unconditionally supportive of the conservative agenda. That's not what many of us consider "left" technically. |
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