Al Gore is in the spotlight again with his must-read solutions book — “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” And that means the daggers are out. But who would have imagined that one of the first pieces would be by the NYT’s John Broder, who repeats the false claims by “Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics,” that “Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first ‘carbon billionaire,’ profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.” I’m going to repost a piece by Media Matters from May that looks at one of the despicable origins of this smear, “O’Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Al Gore’s recent congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization.”
But first I’m going to repost a response to the NYT piece by Grist’s Dave Roberts:
Al Gore’s back in the public eye, promoting his new book, which naturally raises the question: which mainstream press outlet will be the first to do a vapid hit piece?
Today [Monday] we have our answer: The New York Times, which has run a truly absurd and embarrassing piece from John Broder. It casts about desperately seeking something sinister about the fact that Gore invests in clean energy technologies. Listen to this piece of dark insinuation:
Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.
Gore is “positioned to profit,” you understand. No wonder he’s dedicated most of his adult life to schlepping around the world giving a slide show to tens of thousands of people! It was all to marginally increase the return on his future investments! Diabolical.
Who is saying this absurd crap?
“Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first ‘carbon billionaire’ …” Critics like loony Rep. Marsha Blackburn and denialist propaganda hack Marc Morano. These are the people driving the NYT news operation now.
But look down toward the bottom. No, farther … farther … farther … yeah, waaay down in the second-to-last paragraph:
“I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it,” Mr. Gore said, adding that he had put “every penny” he has made from his investments into the Alliance for Climate Protection.
So all the money from Gore’s investments is invested in a nonprofit to fight climate change. He’s not “positioned to profit.” He’s not “poised” to become a “billionaire.” The entire premise of the story is false. I’m sure the tiny percentage of readers who make it down this far in the story will be delighted to discover they’ve completely wasted their time.
To summarize: Professional Gore haters, who make their living peddling lies, cast an absurd charge against Gore. The charge goes in the headline. It goes in the first paragraphs of the story. Then in paragraph 32 it’s revealed that the charge is baseless. And John Broder wasn’t embarrassed to have this appear under his byline.
Oh, and to state the obvious: even if it were true, nobody but a professional Gore hater could possibly find anything wrong with someone investing in the very solutions they say are necessary to save the world. The non-Gore-demented might even find that a perfectly predictable way for a capitalist to respond.
As this Daily Kos diary points out, this seems of a piece with the New York Times’ stated desire to be more “tuned-in” to Fox and right-wing talk radio. Apparently in our new media age, a baseless charge from ‘wingers is in and of itself justification for an extended story on the nation’s most precious news real estate. Welcome to the future.
JR: As I wrote back in May, if you saw Gore’s terrific testimony on Waxman-Markey with former Sen. Warner (details here, full CSPAN video here), then you saw the absurd attempt by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to suggest that the reason Gore has been advocating climate action for decades is to make money. FoxNews doctored the video of Gore’s response to smear him, and I’m excerpting a post from Morgan Weiland and the researchers at Media Matters who first blogged on this outrage in here.
On the May 1 edition of The O’Reilly Factor, during a segment suggesting that former Vice President Al Gore has profited from his advocacy of renewable energy and climate change mitigation, guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Gore’s April 24 congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization.
Introducing the segment, Ingraham stated: “It seems that being green does pay big time — just ask Al Gore. Mr. Global Warming was worth about $2 million or so when he left office in 2001, but after eight years of tirelessly working to save the world, the planet, he’s now reportedly — get this — worth a whopping $100 million. His financial windfall came up at last week’s Capitol Hill hearing.” Ingraham then aired the following selectively edited clips from Gore’s testimony:
REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): Is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?
[Ingraham's cut]
GORE: If you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.
[Ingraham's cut]
GORE: I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?
BLACKBURN: I am simply asking for clarification –
GORE: I’m proud of it.
BLACKBURN: — of the relationship.
GORE: I’m proud of it.
The full exchange from the hearing is included below, with the parts Ingraham provided in italics, and Gore’s relevant responses — which were omitted from the O’Reilly Factor segment — in bold:
BLACKBURN: So you’re a partner in Kleiner Perkins. OK. Now, they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation. So is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?
GORE: I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge.
And Congresswoman, if you’re — if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.
BLACKBURN: Sir, I’m not making accusations, I’m asking questions that have been asked of me and individuals — constituents that were seeking a point of clarity, so I am asking you for that point of — point of clarity.
GORE: I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.
BLACKBURN: And, well — you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit –
GORE: Every penny that I have made –
BLACKBURN: Every penny –
GORE: – has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?
BLACKBURN: I am simply asking for clarification –
GORE: I’m proud of it.
BLACKBURN: – of the relationship.
GORE: I’m proud of it.
JR: Not only does Ingraham doctor the video, here is what she says after showing it.
INGRAHAM: Did she get the question actually answered? With us now Marc Morano, who’s the executive editor of….
JR: Yes, Laura, she did get the question actually answered — you just doctored it out and now have the nerve to make that slanderous insinuation.
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Character Assassination is one tool in the political toolkit. I first started noticing it as soon as a started paying attention to politics. I don’t know if it is used more frequently by the right … could be my own observational bias. But it is used pretty frequently. Just one more way that human primate troops attempt to ostracize ‘the other’ and encourage solidarity with ‘my guys.’ Who’s in and who’s out? Who reigns supreme in the troop? Tune into Hannity tonight!
Maybe I am wrong but I thought the piece on Al Gore in the New York Times was well done and quite representative of Mr. Gore’s attitudes towards his many faceted role in promoting an appropriate response to the Climate Crisis. The fact is that people do wonder about his financial activities and as someone who is VERY OFTEN asked about him I was pleased with the article. And it was not all that much different from how he explains himself in person on the same issue.
That was no hit job. It read to me like it was trying to appeal to conservatarians.
Take a chill pill, Joe. There will be plenty of knee-jerk Gore Derangement Syndrome reactions to laugh at in the coming weeks, all of which will read the same and be deranged. Plenty to laugh at and ridicule coming. This wasn’t one of them, IMO.
Best,
D
I didn’t think the article was a “hit job” BUT Broder was coming at it from a nasty and disingenuous premise – a right-wing premise. Why? Why? Why? I was left shaking my head.
And the fact that IT WAS ON THE COVER (below the fold) just adds the the bewilderment.
It was so obviously easy fodder for the right-wing-noise-machine…. And so unnecessary!
Any article that focuses on what so-called “critics”, which is a euphemism for fossil fuel industry-funded liars, “on the political right and among global warming skeptics,” have to say about anything is a load of crap.
It is presenting fake, phony, trumped-up, scripted, focus-group-tested, teleprompted, corporate-sponsored, pseudo-ideological “conservative” propaganda as “news”.
But that’s what ExxonMobil pays the New York Times to pay its writers the big bucks to churn out.
Broder completely lost the story line. The key facts of the story were:
1. Al Gore has made a considerable fortune, increasing his net worth from about $2M in 2000 to hundreds of millions today. The money came primarily from BOD and consultant duties at Google, Apple, and a partnership at the large VC firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, and Byers (KPCB).
2. Al Gore has invested millions of dollars of his money into green technology investments. In just one fund, he invested $35M, so the total investment is likely significantly larger than that amount.
3. All of the money he has made from his investment in green technology, and all the proceeds from the sale of his book and the film “Inconvenient Truth” has been donated to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection.
4. As a result, Al Gore has not personally received any money directly from his work on global warming issues, since leaving office as Vice President of the United States.
Now look at the article Broder wrote. He uses quotes like Al Gore could become the world’s first carbon billionaire, which is completely at odds with the facts. And Broder should have known this, and told us in the story that Al Gore isn’t personally profiting from his work on global warming.
Broder blew the story. And if he wanted to be completely fair, he should have called out the news organizations and politicians who are spreading the mis-information.
Global warming debate is too hot to handle
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ comment/ personal-view/ 6505623/ Global-warming-debate-is-too-hot-to-handle.html
This sentiment sums up everything that has gone wrong with the green debate – whichever side you are on. Like most people, I am not a scientist. If a man in a white coat with a lot of letters after his name shows me a graph and says it proves that the planet is getting warmer because of the effects of man-made carbon emissions, I tend to believe him.
The problem is that if another man with an equally dazzling coat and accumulation of letters says that no, actually, the Antarctic ice cap is 30 per cent thicker than it was 30 years ago and climate change is caused by sunspots, not CO2, then I’m swayed by him, too. Then what?
Opinions on climate have been subsumed into larger political and ethical positions. Campaigning to stop climate change is “Left-wing”, disputing its existence or extent is “Right-wing”.
Its really quite absurd. Broder implicates Gore as if he’s trying to profit right from the onset of the article, even before it begins with the title, calling him the world’s first “carbon billionaire”, yet he concludes the article knowing full well Gore is putting “every penny” into the Alliance for Climate Protection.
As for Graham and Fox News, well no surprises there. That’s how that news channel operates, but its not like CNN is any better at “fair and balanced” coverage either.
The NYTimes should be better though and not printing fallacies like this.
According to this article the Moran has already jumped on the smear:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ earth/ environment/ climatechange/ 6496196/ Al-Gore-profiting-from-climate-change-agenda.html
I find it irresistible not to at least take a moment to wonder aloud what Galileo is doing tonight. My hope would be that the great man is resting in peace and that his head is not spinning in his grave. How, now, can Galileo possibly find peace when so few leaders speak out clearly and loudly regarding whatsoever they believe to be true about the distinctly human-driven predicament that could soon be confronted by the family of humanity which results directly from the unbridled overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities of the human species now overspreading the Earth and threatening to ravage the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit? Too many of our leaders are remaining silent.
Where are more leaders like Al Gore who are willing to openly support science that is being presented in the solid scientific observations and consensually validated empirical data of the IPCC? The pivotal climate change conference in Copenhagen is to occur next month. Look at the disarray in which we find ourselves now and how far we have to travel in a short time to reach legally binding commitments that move the human community away from precipitating some unimaginable sort of global ecological wreckage.
What would the world we inhabit look like if scientists like Galileo had chosen to adopt a code of silence and maintain the gag rule promulgated by the rich and powerful in his day. In such circumstances, Galileo as well as scientists today would speak only about scientific evidence which was deemed by the super-rich and powerful Masters of the Universe among us to be politically convenient, religiously tolerable, economically expedient, socially correct and culturally prescribed. Scientists would be effectively breaching their duty to science and humanity to tell the truth as they see it, as best they can report it.
Science must overcome silence, lest everything our leaders say they are trying to preserve and protect could be ruined.
Perhaps there is something in the great work of Al Gore, the scientists of the IPCC, and the leaders at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference that will give Galileo a moment of peace.
Dr. Romm, I admire Al Gore and all the effort he has been spending to educidate us to act against GW.
May I request that if you can, please urge him directly to make his pleading for action by the American people clearer.
Al Gore would be considerably more effective if he said openly: and simply:
“Write letters to your two senators and one congressperson, also phone them, and also email them often and urge them to fight against global warming. The more pressure you put on your representatives in Congress the more they will listen to you.”
Or something to this effect. Clear, direct action.
Al Gore is an outstanding man, but he is so intellectual that he does not use the simple words, the words that lead to action by most people.
Dr. Romm, thank you for your outstanding work against GW
Broder writes with a somewhat bitter attitude, perhaps more so since the pay cuts, and he is often lacking on the facts, just quoting one person or another without checking if the person quoted might be intentionally incorrect, but he is really more about the drama than the story and this is why you get this kind of thing. His hook here seems to be that Gore is not required to disclose his assets publicly so it is mere speculation on Gore’s part where every penny of his money goes. So, it is OK to indulge the speculation of others on the subject as well. This lacks logic, but it fills up some column inches. What we can be nearly sure of is that Broder has not read Gore’s new book, he is just taking advantage of the timing of the release.
Paulm –
Let’s assume, for sake of argument, that all scientists are honorable and that they can honestly disagree about interpretation of certain evidence. Now, one man in a white coat with fancy letters after his name tells you that his research shows global warming is not happening. On the other hand, 1000 men and women in white coats, each one with fancy letters after his or her name, tell you that their collective researches have led them to a consensus that human-created carbon emissions cause global warming and that global warming, left unchecked, would have catastrophic effects for human life and life on earth. Who would you be inclined to believe? For this is the situation we in fact face.
For the record, I know a lot of scientists–grew up among them, in fact–and I’ve never seen a scientist, who is not also a physician, wear a white coat.
Chris Dudley… It is true that Al Gore is not required to file financial disclosures to list his assets, income, and investments. But Gore testified in front of Congress in May, and he is required in congressional testimony to be truthful. So Gore is on the record, with that congressional testimony, that every penny he had made from his green investments, his book, and royalty from the film, was contributed to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection.
Given that, Mr. Broder has no excuses for this incredibly wrong and clearly biased article.
Fyi, here is the content of the email I just sent to Mr. Broder:
Dear Mr. Broder,
Your piece in the Nov 2, Monday NYT, titled “Gore’s Dual Role: Advocate and Investor” is way off base.
Five paragraphs in you write, “And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.”
And then, in the next paragraph, you go on to say, “Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.”
In the following paragraphs, you dredge up the pathetic garbage Representative Marsha Blackburn threw at Al Gore during hearings earlier this year.
Yet you know full well he has given every penny of profit from his Green investments to the NFP Alliance for Climate Protection. And how do you know this? Beacause of course you did due diligence as a journalist and took the time to read the entire transcript of the exchange between Gore and Blackburn. Right?
So why in the world would you even report all the nonsense from detractors stating that Al Gore is poised to personally reap big financial rewards from his investments in Green business ventures? You know full well, sir, that he is in no such position. And why did you wait until the penultimate paragraph of your piece to finally point out this explicit information? Why not instead behave with some journalistic integrity and debunk the distortions and lies coming from folks like Blackburn, Senator Inhofe, and Marc Morano?
Do you think you’re being cute, cynically assuming your readers are too lazy to read all the way until the end of the story? You should be ashamed of yourself, sir. Next time, have the decency and spine to cry “Bullshit” when you see it, instead of buying into the vapid, right wing, anti-science agenda trying to throttle progressive American efforts to avert a human-made climate catastrophe that your grand-children will experience full force in their lifetime.
Sincerely,
David Schonberger
Seconded, David Schonberger, a fine treatise – except I would say Broder himself perhaps, and certainly his children, will experience human-made climate catastrophe in their lifetimes.
It’s coming soon to a theatre near you.
Two things:
First: the article is very sloppy and utterly confusing. The end sentence about placing all of the money he makes into his non-profit is wholly without context and, therefore, is worthless as far as explaining the different way Gore treats his other money-making ventures (google, etc.) and those that would profit via his advocacy for halting climate change.
Second: Is Mr. Broder trying to say that all of those “green” mutual funds, and other “green” investment portfolios are bad because they profit off of activities that don’t pollute our environment? Or is he saying that we shouldn’t try to clean up our environment if in doing so the economy might prosper? Or is he saying that those that work for a cleaner environment aren’t allowed to make money as part of that accomplishment?
There is no news story here. Broder has tried, unsuccessfully, to fabricate one out of thin air. His editor should have squashed this from the get go.
Actually, there is a news story here. The newspaper industry has cut staff way too much.
Broder’s piece deserves a place in a journalism workbook.
How to so load up the first 120 lines with doubt and accusation…
to effectively overwhelm the final 5 lines of denial.
I’d love to make a billion on Carbon.
I’ve got dreams.
What’s not there to persuade the greedy / money-centric to drop their investments in dying old businesses?
Gore must have known the response when he put money in clean energy. I wonder a little bit his investment. Why to give stones to rogues who for sure throw them back on your back?
I’d been wondering where Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian ‘news’paper had got the term ‘climate change billionaire Gore’ from (here, if you must look: http://tinyurl.com/yktjekd) Frankly that newspaper is almost as much a disgrace as ”Fox News?”, and we DownUnderites are longer sufferers of Murdoch than anybody else, so we have some pity on us. (Tidbit: his 100-year-old mother has recently flipped, and now recognizes – somewhat belatedly – that climate change is a threat.) However, for proof of intelligent life this way, check out this speech today from Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as he takes on the denialists. (Sorry, you’ll have to download the pdf at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1167). Keep up the fight, and congratulations on this blog.
Paul (#14),
I don’t disagree with you. I think the article lacks a logical foundation. I was just commenting on Broder’s style and structure. All journalists are influenced by the hack mentality at least on bad days. Broder seems to have hit a rough patch recently in my view.
Quoting from NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast: “not long ago we got a memo from the NPR science desk indicating we’re not anymore going to find the one guy who says there is no climate change…. we’re not going to make it a quid pro quo debate issue”.
I was astonished that they would admit this. The financial reporter publicly admitted that the science desk of the public radio station in the US had a policy to report the issue as other than it was for two decades, and now they don’t. Climatologists as far back as 1988 would state that their science rested on at least as firm a foundation as economics, and express their dismay at the difference in the reporting.
I’ve often wondered how it works at the NYTimes for the climate change issue.
I imagine that somehow it is communicated to types like Broder and Revkin that polls show that the newspaper’s readers are split on climate change, from whether it is a legitimate issue at all to how seriously the US should respond to it, and that the NYTimes exists ultimately only because it is able to sell newspapers to this diverse group. Perhaps as soon as you enter the building you absorb this by osmosis. Or maybe its when you cash your paycheck.
I’ve heard many in the media express regret for the way they catered to their readers who were generally in blind support for Bush as he ramped up the propaganda preparing for war in Iraq, and one day, I expect we’ll hear them tell us they didn’t do their jobs properly at a time when it mattered, i.e. now, on climate change.
For the record, Broder’s editor is Erica Goode.
It’s not fair to blame the author when we don’t know how much the article’s been shaped by the editor.
Oh, to give Broder and Goode and Revkin truth serum…
Chris Dudley (#22) I know you weren’t disagreeing with me. I was just trying to point to Gore’s congressional testimony, in response to denier claims that we shouldn’t believe Gore. I think since Gore did testify to Congress on this issue, that these sworn statements should carry some weight.
I have never seen anyone who has been correct on so many issues, be defamed as badly as Al Gore Jr. Many of the attacks on Gore are easily disproved. If you read the large comment thread on the NYTimes, the same lies are repeated over and over again. For example, many people claim Al Gore worked for Occidental Petroleum, and claim his current wealth is related to oil and coal money from Oxy. This is a not-so-clever lie… the Al Gore who worked for Oxy, was Al Gore Sr. who ran the coal subsidiary of Oxy back around 1970, long before climate change had emerged as an issue. The deniers just attempt to put one man’s bio on the other similarly named man. At the time his father worked for Oxy, Al Gore Jr. was in his early 20s, and pretty much on his own.
And as I pointed out above, Al Gore Jr. had a net worth of about $2M when his term as VPOTUS expired. Today his wealth is much, much higher, and this is clearly not due to investments in coal or oil. But this exposed lie goes a long way to reveal the unethical and immoral attacks by his critics. I have friends and relatives in key swing states, who were exposed to these lies orchestrated by Karl Rove’s key backers in the 2000 election, who even today believe that Al Gore Jr.’s fortune is based on coal and oil!! This goes to demonstrate how pervasive and long-lived lies and smears of a person’s background can last.
The reason propaganda from deniers works, is because many people are pre-disposed to believe the lies, and news personnel and commentators, are reluctant and slow to call a lie a lie.
This behaviour of Laura Ingraham’s reads like a page taken from George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth playbook. I have to tip my hat to anyone who can bring so much integrity to evil. Amazing stuff.