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Heartland Calls Wahhmbulance, Anticipates PBS Frontline will Report Truth Tonight
First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.
by Peter Sinclair, via Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Heartland Institute, famous for billboard craziness (see above) and hosting the semi-semi-annual woodstock for wackjobs known as the International Conference on Climate Change (hereafter “Denia-Palooza) – which this year featured the (wildly applauded) racist rantings of “Lord” Christopher Monckton, once mere climate crank, now AIDS curer and full-on Obama birth certificate nut-job – that Heartland – has now released a press release pre-protesting whatever treatment they might get in tonights PBS Frontline production “Climate of Doubt”.
Heartland screed as follows:
On Tuesday, October 23, PBS’s “Frontline” program will broadcast a special titled “Climate of Doubt.” It promises to go “inside the organizations” that helped turn the tide of public opinion, and then of elected officials, away from excessive concern over the possible threat of man-made global warming.
The Heartland Institute is likely to be a central figure in this program as we welcomed “Frontline” producer Catherine Upin and her crew to our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago in May. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor also gave a three-hour interview to the film crew in August. Earlier this year, The Economist called Heartland “the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change.”
We hope the program is accurate and fair, but past experience both with PBS and other mainstream media outlets leads us to predict it will be neither. Several Heartland staff will be watching the program and commenting live via Twitter and on our blog, Somewhat Reasonable.
The Frontline crew, rumor has it, have been doing some exhaustive digging into the climate denial movement. My only hope would be that the affair doesn’t boomerang with too much face time for crazy people, and not enough for explanatory science.
Moreover, at that conference, a well known denier told me that his biggest concern about public opinion was that it might be swayed by extreme events. I told him to bet on it. That was a few weeks before we knew that the corn crop was in trouble – and subsequent polling has confirmed his premonition. This summer was a hinge-point in US Public awareness of climate change.
If you think Mitt Romney’s recent threats against Public Broadcasting were about budgets or Big Bird, think again. The reason the right hates PBS is that sometimes it commits the unpardonable sin of journalism.
Peter Sinclair is editor of Climate Denial Crock of the Week. This piece was originally posted at his website and was reprinted with permission.
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2012-10-24 04:13:07
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