Bringing the Heat on Warming [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
The Heartland Institute website [3] accuses Gore of a "snowjob" on global warming.Chicago Sun-Times Business Editor Dan Miller, who previously used his editorial position [4] to promote the writings of corporate pollution-apologist Steven Milloy [5], is now lending his name to a bit of global warming [6] skepticism disseminated by the Heartland Institute [7], a corporate-funded think tank where he used to work. Miller's cover letter accompanies a mailing to journalists in which Heartland public affairs director Tom Swiss trashes Al Gore [8]'s documentary about the issue, "An Inconvenient Truth [9]," as an "alarmist or kind of an extreme example" of reporting on the issue, while "The Great Global Warming Swindle [10]," which takes the opposite view, is praised as "a European documentary by Martin Durkin that won a lot of awards." (Evidently Swiss didn't think to mention Gore's awards, which include an Academy Award and the Nobel Prize [11].) Bob Steele, an ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute [12] for media studies, sees some problems with Miller's eagerness to flack for anti-environmentalist causes. "He is actively urging a particular examination, and I would suggest a point of view, on a substantive public policy issue," Steele said. "He's also pitching it in a problematic way to other journalists, using his journalistic connections in doing so."