Monday, February 05, 2007
Convenient propaganda?
From the RoundTable blog
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David Campbell
Campbell, of Ferrum, teaches journalism in Franklin County.
I left Franklin County in 1983, and I returned in 2000. I was both surprised and happy upon my return to find that The Roanoke Times' portrayal of events in Franklin County has much improved over the years.
As a journalism teacher in Franklin County, I have used The Roanoke Times as our textbook. We have used it as a model of good writing, layout, design, and fair and balanced reporting -- that was until Jan. 25. On that day, we used it as an example of irresponsible journalism and misinformation.
I refer to the article in the Virginia section "Global warming in 60 minutes," in which reporter John Cramer detailed Franklin County teacher John Richardson's global warming training with Al Gore.
Basically, Richardson was hand-picked by Gore to learn and present PowerPoint presentations about global warming based on Gore's book and movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." The intention was to return to localities and spread the word exponentially.
Cramer initially did a fine job reporting that Richardson would be making his first presentation at the Franklin County Public Library. Midway through the article, however, Cramer morphed the piece into a rebuff of global warming. There was no place in the article for this.
Had the story been about whether global warming exists, then an opposing view would be appropriate. The article, however, was really about Richardson's presentation.
Cramer went on to report alternative views as presented by the Chicago-based Heartland Institute and the Oregon Petition. Had Cramer done 30 seconds of research on the Internet, he would have found that in the past six years, these two institutions combined have received more than $1 million from Exxon Corp. And, of course, it is well-known that fossil fuels are primarily responsible for global warming. At best, this should have been noted in the article. At worst, it is a conflict of interest.
Then, Cramer quotes James Taylor of the Heartland Institute: "Essentially, Al Gore is cherry-picking data and misrepresenting facts" and duping volunteers such as Richardson into "spreading more harm than good."
At first glance, it would appear that Taylor is actually making these statements about Richardson. Upon closer examination, however, it is an obvious manipulation of quotes and punctuation to create the effect.
Of course, the copy desk didn't help matters by running the jump headline on Page 5: "Greenhouse: Skeptics say Gore chose data selectively." What does this have to do with Richardson's presentation? By making these statements, it casts a negative light on his project -- even though Taylor's information mentioned is suspect.
But let's look at numbers. The Oregon Petition's numbers, views and statistics were gleaned from a survey circulated to 12,000 of its members. Of the 12,000, 795 responded. Of the 795 (which is only 6.6 percent of those surveyed) 41 percent disagreed with the reality of global warming. That brings the number to less than 3 percent. Now who's "cherry picking" data?
Moreover, the Oregon Petition is headed by a man named Frank Seitz. Seitz was at one time in charge of public relations for R.J. Reynolds' medical research. Enough said.
Worse yet, Richardson was not even given the opportunity to refute any of the suspect statements Cramer included. In short, the average readers will not check out the statements purported by these organizations. They will take the information at face value.
Finally, it should be noted that in a study titled "Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating Controversy Where Science Finds Consensus," by Jules and Maxwell Boykoff, it was reported that in the past 10 years in scientific journals, 928 articles were written about global warming. Of those, none disputed the existence of global warming. But in the popular press (newspapers/magazines) there have been 636 articles -- and 53 percent of the writers disagree with the premise that global warming exists and is human-made. These writers are not scientists, yet they wish to perpetuate disinformation and misinformation just as The Times did.
It is not clear whether Cramer wanted this information in the article of his own volition or whether it was an editor. What is clear, however, is that the information would have been better served in a different article -- perhaps one that actually follows money trails.
