Heretics!

Somewhere, there's a big bonfire laid with Michael Palmer's name on it. Any day now, he's going to be burned at the stake for heresy.
As General Manager of two TV stations, he’s certainly an established member of the media family.
Now however, he is a rogue.
An apostate.
A blasphemer in the church of the politically correct media who has disputed the holy word and unquestionable newsworthiness of former Vice President Al Gore.
No lesser arbiters of proper media orthodoxy than the grand inquisitors of the New York Times itself decree it so.
In an exquisitely condescending article, Times reporter Joseph Treaster spells out the sacrilege. Palmer has had the audacity to declare "enough already" with the global warming stories at the two news operations he oversees in Bangor, Maine.
Further, Palmer spelled out his objections in an email to his staff.
This email mysteriously found its way to the Times which offers this patronizing interpretation.

"How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television."

Wink wink.
Oh these bumpkins.
Don’t think global warming is "important." How silly.
In the interest of journalistic accuracy, it behooves one to point out that Palmer never said any such thing. He took up a position it’s easy to imagine coming from any conscientious news decision maker, Republican or Democrat, global warming believer or unbeliever.
Here’s what really did happen: During the summer, Palmer’s Bangor TV stations broadcast… here’s the important part… live reports from the opening of Al Gore’s hysterical global warming doomsday propaganda movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Why is this significant? For most local TV news operations, especially those in smaller cities, live reports are usually the marquee stories of a newscast, the top stories, the biggest news events in the metro area that day.
And on this occasion, these top billing positions went to…
The opening of a movie?
And not just the opening of a movie, but the opening of a political message movie with an overwhelming partisan twist?
Is this appropriate?
That was the question Palmer dared to ask. He emailed to several staffers, according to the enforcers of The Times, the following:

"I was wondering where we should send the bill for the live shot Friday at the theater for the Al Gore commercial we aired."

This is an extremely common complaint for news managers, as Times reporter Joseph Treaster must surely be aware. Unthinking, unquestioning news stories, especially pull-out-the-stops live reports covering promotional events, shopping center ribbon cuttings, tea parties et cetera frequently amount to little more than free publicity, unless there is some compelling news reason for covering them. Palmer did not see any journalistic reason to cover the opening of a partisan political propaganda movie. Instead he enumerated what he saw as journalistic reasons not to cover it.

"a) we do local news,
b) the issue evolved from hard science into hard politics and
c) despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, this science is far from conclusive."

"Local" news?
This is the heart of Palmer’s argument and the degree to which it’s ignored demonstrates the gross disingenuousness of The Times’ entire pompous tirade.
Anyone remotely familiar with the workings of local TV news knows that such news organizations face a difficult task, covering, with limited resources, news of importance, sometimes unique importance to their metropolitan audiences, news that may well appear nowhere else. For instance, while the balance of power in the U.S. Congress can affect the lives of virtually everyone in the country, it likely merits only cursory attention from local TV or newspapers. The issue already receives plentiful coverage from national news outlets, coverage which in turn is carried on local TV stations. On the other hand, the fortunes of individual, locally based congressional candidates would be inconsequential to the networks but of keen interest to local viewers and therefore of interest to local news departments. Whether Mister Smith, Democrat of Finortner County goes to Washington is a major story in Finortner County and for its press corps.
"An Inconvenient Truth" was one of hundreds of major Hollywood movies coming out in national release this year. What possible reason could there be for granting it such exalted play in a local newscast?
Except…?
perhaps…?
Palmer’s second point: Politics.
If David Duke produced and starred in a remake of "Birth of a Nation," would that warrant extensive coverage?
Well, maybe it would, but that coverage would be a deafening chorus of condemnation. Has "An Inconvenient Truth" received even a skeptical reception from the media? Not.
The concerns raised in the current global warming debate could indeed be grave and legitimate, but the entire discourse on the subject has been almost hopelessly commandeered by the most extreme, anti-American, anti-industrial, anti-free enterprise nutjobs from the lunatic fringe, and by their fellow travelers in an anti-American, anti-industrial, anti-free enterprise press corps.
Scientific comparison has taken the back seat to a political shouting match and the only politically correct conclusion allowed is the credo that… global warming is happening; global warming is caused by man’s emissions of greenhouse gases; and therefore all growth and progress throughout the civilized world must be stopped and dismantled and we should all go back to living on communes eating roots and berries. (…except for those third world countries who are the fastest growing emitters of greenhouse gases. They should get a pass.)
All this comes despite the fact that there are plenty of respected scientists for whom the conclusions of that credo are hardly final or irrefutable.
That’s Palmer’s third point and the one that probably earned him his storm of slings, arrows and boiling oil from the ivory tower of the New York Times.
He dares to question.
He dares to question!
With the fervor of their political passions stirred, many of today’s media demigods have decreed any evaluation of the threat of global warming is over, over, over, period! No further discussion or debate will be permitted, period! There can be no further questioning, period!
The Times has proclaimed that there exists an irrefutable global scientific "consensus" on the matter, in which everyone who’s anyone now agrees the global warming credo is the only acceptable philosophy.
…as if scientific discovery were some democratic process dependent on agreement or "consensus." Einstein would laugh his mustache off.
At a conference in August, ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore dismissed the very notion of including dissenting voices in any discussion of the subject. Should reports on the issue of global warming be balanced? Why no, he proclaimed, going so far as to say that, in addressing the issue, "I don’t like the word ‘balance’ much at all."
So the evidence supporting the credo is so strong and its assertions so irrefutable it can’t even withstand inquiry, dissent, further examination? How interesting.
Blakemore proclaimed that those who question the global warming theories to which he subscribes are "the proverbial flat earth society."
Perfect. An ad hominem dismissal, and a brilliant characterization of the level to which this discourse has sunk in what may become its most important venue, the public square. The scientific world must continue its analyses and review of course, but ultimately policy questions will have to be aired through the media, a forum becoming progressively less helpful for so important a task.
The evidence of global warming is compelling enough to warrant a serious, broadly engaged, public discussion, not a dogmatic new political campaign to destroy America’s economy and industrial infrastructure. The gatekeepers of Big Media do a grave disservice by relentlessly warping this issue into a political one.
The dustup over the Bangor TV stations and Palmer’s blasphemous foray off the reservation, to the extent that he’s excoriated even for questioning what the proper venue for such a discussion might be, is a stark example of the compromised competence or willful unsuitability of some contemporary "journalistic" organizations to cover the global warming issue.
That does not bode well for our society’s ability to confront the matter.
October 30, 2006