think tanks

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at radio shows on drugs, when U.S. think tanks meddle overseas, and mad policies on mad cow. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Dow's chemical legacy. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

Who could blame them if they sent the Mounties to the border? CMD reported previously on the Heartland Institute's climate change skepticism, and its efforts to cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence of global warming. The Chicago-based, ExxonMobil-funded think tank has taken its case north of the border, sending out "more than 11,000 brochures and DVDs to Canadian schools urging them to teach their students that scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming." While Heartland says that the outreach effort is an attempt to introduce "balance" into the discussion, the Sierra Club of Canada disagrees. Spokesperson Emilie Moorhouse said, "It's alarming that an American think tank is distributing misinformation on the most important issue of our time in Canadian schools, to actually create an illusion that there is a scientific debate." Ignoring the consensus reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that climate change is "unequivocal" and caused by human activities, "the brochure and DVD said that scientists were 'deeply divided' about 'the notion that climate change is mostly the result of human activities.'" Heartland also sent the information packets to 200 Canadian policymakers.

"Former vice president Al Gore (through his Alliance for Climate Protection) will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history. ... The climate alliance's initiative, however, will not go unchallenged by climate change skeptics. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a nonprofit funded by the coal industry and its allies, is spending about $35 million this election to bolster support for coal-generated electricity. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that receives part of its funding from oil and gas companies" is attacking Gore. Meanwhile, the Glover Park Group must be laughing all the way to the bank. The public relations firm is working for Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, and also for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers against automobile fuel efficiency standards. For GPG, it's all about billable hours.

EPA Administrator JohnsonU.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson dismissed his own agency's findings that greenhouse gases threaten the public. Instead, he'll open a lengthy public comment period asking for input on greenhouse gases, before acting on a U.S. Supreme Court order requiring the EPA to regulate polluters. Johnson's move effectively delays any federal action to limit greenhouse gas emissions until well past the end of George W. Bush's final term in office. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson's slow approach "mirrors that advocated by a coalition of industry groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation." A Sierra Club attorney called the delay "outrageous." Representative Henry Waxman said the Bush administration was "recklessly abandoning its responsibility to address the global warming crisis." An EPA spokesman disagreed, calling the move "an historic moment" because "no administration has taken this step to evaluate this new pollutant."

"The 25 most media-prominent think tanks were cited 17 percent less in 2007 than they were the year before," according to an annual survey by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "The overall ideological breakdown was the same ... 47 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, 37 percent to conservative or right-leaning think tanks, and 16 percent to progressive or left-leaning think tanks." The downward trend "is not necessarily a bad thing. ... Given that FAIR's surveys have consistently found that these supposedly detached experts actually tilt toward the center-right, fewer of them spinning and shaping news coverage may be a net plus for media transparency, if not diversity." The current issue of FAIR's magazine "Extra!" also contains the group's annual "Fear & Favor" report. Among the news outlets mentioned is Portland's KOIN-TV, which CMD documented airing a video news release. KOIN merited mention for its "weekly medical report," which is sponsored by Providence Health Systems and consistently features Providence experts and information.

A week ago the Exxon-funded think tank, the Heartland Institute, hosted what it dubbed The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. In his opening remarks, Heartland's President Joseph L. Bast posed the question "Are the scientists and economists who ask these questions just a fringe group, outside the scientific mainstream?" He insisted they weren't, but his own framing of the question reflects how marginalized and defensive the global warming skeptics have become.

The detailed list of conference speakers and co-sponsors posted by Heartland on the conference website provides a pretty comprehensive guide to the global network of skeptics. (There may be a few of those speaking at the conference who aren't skeptics but the presenters list is dominated by people from the usual collection of free-market think tanks). In all likelihood, the most active global warming skeptics in the years ahead will come from within the ranks of those individuals and groups at the conference.

So our challenge is to ensure that there is at least a 'stub' page in SourceWatch on each of the speakers and sponsoring think tanks as a quick reference resource for interested citizens and journalists. (A stub page need only comprise a sentence or two and some basic formatting, but the more comprehensive it is the better). Once created, the new page will be indexed by Google and other search engines and quickly rise to near the top of search results. If you would like to help, go to the project page and follow the steps set out in the notes. Have fun, and thanks for your help!

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at tobacco's involvement in South Carolina politics, when a blog is more of an ad, and a biased definition of, well, bias. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the Heartland Institute and their connections to the energy industry. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

An article in the Independent links funding for the "2008 International Conference on Climate Change" held in New York earlier this month to tobacco and oil companies. As an earlier Spin noted, the global warming skeptics conference was organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. Heartland has opposed scientific consensus on both secondhand tobacco smoke and climate change. Heartland claims on its website that no energy industry money was used to support the conference, but did not address tobacco industry funding. Still, a substantial number of conference sponsors -- including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Independent Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, Frontiers of Freedom and Citizens' Alliance for Responsible Energy -- have received support from energy or tobacco companies, or both. The Heartland Institute itself has received funding from Exxon and Philip Morris.

St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, Moscow"Flush with foreign reserves from oil and natural gas sales, the Kremlin is pumping tens of millions of dollars into various forms of public diplomacy," reports Peter Finn. The Russian government "has hired the giant U.S. public relations firm Ketchum Inc. 'to help the government tell its story of economic growth and opportunity for its citizens,' said Randy DeCleene, an executive at the firm." As part of the PR push, "the official government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta is ... fund[ing] monthly supplements in newspapers in India, Britain, Bulgaria and the United States," including a paid supplement in the Washington Post. "Russiaprofile.org, a news and analysis site funded by [the government news agency] RIA Novosti" features "a range of opinions, including some quite hostile to the Kremlin." RIA Novosti also hosts an annual "Valdai Discussion Club," where "30 to 40 Russia experts and prominent journalists, mostly from the United States and Western Europe ... are wined and dined in the company of Russian policymakers and political analysts." The Hoover Institute's Michael McFaul (an adviser to Barack Obama's campaign) called the Valdai events, which featured sessions with then-President Vladimir Putin, "really smart PR." A previous Spin noted Russia's new think tank, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation.

The American Enterprise Institute, one of the premier U.S. think tanks, has presented former Australian Prime Minister John Howard with the Irving Kristol Award for 2008. The award, AEI states, is for "individuals who have made exceptional intellectual or practical contributions to improved government policy, social welfare, or political understanding." Howard, AEI gushed, "is one of the world's most successful democratic politicians." While Howard did win four elections, AEI doesn't mention that he made history by being only the second serving Prime Minister to lose his own parliamentary seat. Howard also led his party to a humiliating defeat in the November 2007 election. Many of Howard's hallmark policies -- his support for radical anti-union policies, his refusal to support the Kyoto Protocol to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions, his support for domestic nuclear power plants and his refusal to apologize to indigenous Australians for former governments' policies of separating children from their parents -- have subsequently been jettisoned by his own party.