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“Ignored, and often even censored and demonized” is how the promotional materials for the Heartland Institute’s recent conference “The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,” described the way “distinguished scholars from the U.S. and around the world,” that have had the courage to question global warming, have been treated by environmentalists and the mainstream media. In a “Background” piece, conference organizers claimed that “They have been labeled ’skeptics’ and even ‘global warming deniers,’ a mean-spirited attempt to lump them together with Holocaust deniers.
Always on the lookout to defend the oppressed, both Glenn Beck, the right wing host of a CNN Headline News show, and the Fox News Channel rode in to rescue the “demonized” and beleaguered. On Monday morning, March 3, “Fox and Friends” homed in on the problem that the “skeptics” are facing. Fox’s point: Goreistas, or advocates of devoting major resources to dealing with global warming, receive a disproportionate share of network and cable television face time, while those raising questions about global warming are shut out of the debate.
Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business and Media Institute (BMI) — a co-sponsor of the conference — joined co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade “to explain network news reporters’ failure to balance their coverage of climate change and their tendency to ignore or mistreat scientists and others who disagree with the “consensus” theories surrounding global warming,” a BMI report by Nathan Burchfiel pointed out.
According a BFI report titled “Global Warming Censored: Networks Stifle Debate, Rely on Politicians, Rock Stars and Men-on-the-Street for Science,” written by Gainor and Julia A. Seymour, an analysis of 205 network news stories about “global warming” or “climate change” between July 1, 2007, and Dec. 31, 2007, “found a meager 20 percent of stories even mentioned there were any alternative opinions to the so-called ‘consensus’ on the issue.”
On “Fox and Friends,” Gainor said that “the consensus theory that Al Gore’s been pushing, that the mainstream media have been pushing for years — it’s all bogus.” According to a report posted at Raw Story, Gainor also pointed out that the New York Times had done a “somewhat sarcastic” piece on the conference. “Disagreement’s not allowed in the media,” he complained. “We just did a report looking at how the network news shows have covered climate change. … 13 to one, the people they put on are on one side saying it’s not a debate. … On CBS it’s 38 to one.”
Over at CNN Headline News, Beck told his audience that he would be vigilant in covering the conference “like it was the second coming of Jesus himself.” “After all,” Beck said, “if this were a traditional gathering of global warming alarmists, the media would be everywhere. But, since it’s full of hundreds of credible, mainstream scientists who happen to disagree with their peers, it’s completely ignored.”
However, according to Think Progress, the conference was not ignored by the mainstream, media. “….The New York Times has published two separate articles on the conference, and the Times’ John Tierney has written about it on his blog. Other mainstream press outlets that have covered the conference: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the New York Sun, and Reuters.”
The Business and Media Institute
The Business and Media Institute (BMI) — “Advancing the Culture of free Enterprise in America” — is a project of the Media Research Center (MRC), headed by longtime conservative activist, L. Brent Bozell. In addition to being BMI’s vice president, Gainor is also listed as an MRC “Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow” “a position apparently named for the legendary Texas oilman and corporate raider,” Raw Story reported.
BMI’s Board of Advisors includes at least a dozen people deeply tied to conservative philathropy: Herman Cain, the organization’s national chairman was former President and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc. and President and CEO of T.H.E. New Voice, Inc.; David All, President, The David All Group, LLC and founder of TechRepublican.com and co-founder of Slatecard; Bruce Bartlett, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department; Dr. Donald Boudreaux, Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University; Dr. Richard Ebeling, President, Foundation for Economic Education (website); Dr. Daniel J. Mitchell, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Duane Parde, President, National Taxpayers Union; Grace-Marie Turner, President and founder, Galen Institute (website); Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, President, American Council on Science and Health (website); Dr. Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, George Mason University.
‘The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change’
“The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,” was billed as “the first major international conference to focus on issues and questions not answered by advocates of the theory of man-made global warming.” According to James M. Taylor, the Conference Coordinator and a Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute who is the Managing Editor of its Environment & Climate News, hundreds of scientists, economists, and public policy experts from around the world were brought together “to call attention to widespread dissent in the scientific community to the alleged “consensus” that the modern warming is primarily man-made and is a crisis.”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/global-warming-skeptics-conference-enabled-by-conservative-philanthropy/
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