Waterworld vs. An Inconvenient Truth
Apparently in Maine, you won’t be able to get news coverage of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth until Kevin Costner’s infamous work of cinematic fiction is also a documentary.
The story in today’s New York Times defies logic even more than the script to Costner’s movie, but is far more worth a look:
At 2 TV Stations in Maine, What Al Gore’s Movie Says Isn’t News
How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television.
Michael Palmer, the general manager of television stations WVII and WFVX, ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, has told his joint staff of nine men and women that when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories.”
“Until then,” he added. “No more.”
Mr. Palmer laid out his policy in an e-mail message sent out during the summer. A copy was sent to The New York Times. Mr. Palmer did not respond to a phone message left with an employee of the stations nor to an e-mail message. But a former staff member confirmed the e-mail message that went out during the summer after the stations broadcast a live report from a movie theater in Maine where Al Gore’s movie on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was opening.
Mr. Palmer began his e-mail message: “I was wondering where we should send the bill for the live shot Friday at the theater for the Al Gore commercial we aired.”
Mr. Palmer said he wanted no more stories broadcast on global warming because: “a) we do local news, b) the issue evolved from hard science into hard politics and c) despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, this science is far from conclusive.” Mr. Palmer said in his e-mail message to his operations manager and two women who served as a news anchor and a reporter that he placed “global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, more recently, the Y2K scare when everyone’s computer was going to self-destruct.”
Dr. James Hansen, the director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, said in an interview yesterday that the station’s policy on coverage was irresponsible.
“If you wait until Bar Harbor is underwater, it’s too late,” Dr. Hansen said. “It won’t be just Bar Harbor that is underwater, but many places around the globe including parts of Florida, Bangladesh and the Nile Delta.”
October 30th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
If that happened in my town I would begin protesting in front of the stations in order to make it a local story - while sending press releases to all of their competitors.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:14 pm
This once again shows the mediocrity of the American media, local or national. Climate change coverage has been consistently weak when not downright dishonest.
Up here in Canada, or in Europe for that matter, you won’t find climate “skeptics” being given any airtime… The situation in the U.S. has slowly been getting better since 2005, but some important damage has been done, and it’s gonna take that much longer for a lot of Americans to get around to actually do something about climate change…
I know, it’s not much better right now in Canada, but most of us know it…and the Conservative government is getting killed daily in the media about its environmental (non-existent) programs…
July 24th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Funny things about facts, they come in all kinds, this one of them.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
you know I wake up everyday in fear that our worl iss comming to an end. See what happed in Burma nd China and it is all because we don’t take Global Warming seriously. People, wake up and start realizing that Global warming is much more important that terrorists attaching Europe or America. This is our planet we are talking about. If you have watched the “The day after twommorrow” you get idea…