"I don't like the word 'Balance'"- Says ABC News Global Warming Reporter

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works ^ | October 30, 2006 | Marc Morano and Matthew Dempsey

[tang-soo]

Majority Fact of the Day

"I don't like the word 'Balance'"- Says ABC News Global Warming Reporter

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MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2006

Contact: (Marc_Morano@epw.senate.gov ), (Matthew_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov )

ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore declared "I don't like the word 'balance' much at all" in global warming coverage at a journalism conference in Vermont over the weekend.

Blakemore, who reported on August 30, 2006, "After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate" on global warming, (http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=2374968) said he rejects 'balance' in order to justify excluding any skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming from his reporting. He made his remarks at Friday's panel discussion at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in Burlington.

Blakemore lamented "the deep professional shame that I discovered two years ago," regarding how he believes the media had been manipulated by skeptics of manmade catastrophic global warming.

"Of course [skeptics] play on the idea that we have to be 'balanced,'" he noted.

"It was very lazy of us for 10 years when we were asked for balance from the [climate skeptic] spinners. We just gave up and said 'Okay, okay - I will put the other side on, okay are you happy now?'" he said. "And it saves us from the trouble of having to check out the fact that these other sides were the proverbial flat earth society."

Blakemore also took on the role of psychologist in explaining that global warming presents an "existential" dilemma and people face what he termed "psychological obstacles" about whether to believe the dire predictions that the planet is facing a climate crisis.

"We are looking at serious mainstream scientists now tell us that maybe - it's over. It's hard. It's the kind of news you have to take in small doses," Blakemore explained. [EPW note: Many scientists dispute the notion that mankind has created a climate doomsday. See: (http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777 )]

"Denial is initially natural and healthy; the psychologists tell us it is what we do to hold our meaning system together, so that we can at least function at first when trauma happens and we are all being delivered a major trauma here," he explained. He added that greenhouse gas theory is akin to "3rd grade science."

"Does [extreme weather patterns] fit exactly within the predicted pattern that we projected almost 30 or 40 years ago? This is the little logical problem that we journalists can still work on and solve," Blakemore said. (EPW Note: 30 and 40 years ago, scientists were erroneously predicting a coming ice age. See last week's Newsweek's retraction of global cooling reporting 31 years after its initial report: (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265087 ))

"The problem is we journalists have not stood up on our own feet and said 'Excuse me, this is going to be my assessment of where the scientific assessment is.' Because those spinners would say you got to listen to who -- for the scientific assessment and they will point to their favorable [skeptical] organizations." He also said, "I am a professional journalist; don't tell me how to do my job."

Blakemore said skeptics of global warming should be ignored because some of them are being funded by industry. But he has failed to note that scientists he promotes such as James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, are both recipients of huge sums of money from environmental special interest groups.

When Blakemore reported on January 29, 2006, that NASA scientist James Hansen was alleging that the Bush Administration was censoring his scientific work, he failed to inform viewers that Hansen had received a quarter of a million dollars from Teresa Heinz Kerry's foundation, the Heinz Foundation, and subsequently endorsed her husband Democrat John Kerry for President in 2004 http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1555183 In addition, Michael Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of the group Environmental Defense.

Blakemore also told the journalism conference that global warming was an ever present entity that "affects everything in the weather, everywhere all the time and in every instance."

Blakemore has also lavished praised on Vice President Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth", comparing Gore to Shakespeare and Robert Frost. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2006/05/al_gore_and_an_.html

Related Links:



Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming - Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics - (>)

[MinuteGal]

Of course the unbalanced don't like the word "balance".

Leni

[6SJ7]

Blakemore has also lavished praised on Vice President Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth", comparing Gore to Shakespeare and Robert Frost.

Gore, Shakespeare and Robert Frost... three persons who are not very life-like.

[TBP]

BTTT.

[uptoolate]

I just lit a match.....AHHHHH!!! WE ARE GOING TO DIE!!!

It just blew out......Ah, now we will live.

I just opened my freezer....AHHHHH!!! WE ARE GOING TO DIE!!!

I just closed my freezer.....All is well in the world now.

[Stallone]

You sound exactly like a RINO!

We caught Zarqawi - we're going to win!

We got ambushed - we're going to lose!

We found weapons caches - we're going to win!

Iran is fueling the insurgency - we're going to lose!

Common sense has long ago left the building.

[boris]

"I am a professional journalist; don't tell me how to do my job."

Priceless. You cannot make this stuff up.

--Boris

[ichabod1]

Journalizm is NOT a profession.

[HamiltonJay]

In the 1970s the same "experts" this guy claims are without flaw told us that by now the planet would be an ice cube and we'd all be starving....

Sorry if I'm not going to jump on the latest version of the anti-capitalist bandwagon.

[ichabod1]

We'd also be out of oil.