So I’m watching “Lost” last night, the only network series I make an “appointment” to catch every week, what with all the time I’ve committed to blowing spit wads at Bill O’Reilly. Last night was a big episode. The back story to John Locke, who was crippled and wheel-chair bound until crashing on the island. And I stuck with it pretty good even through ABC’s usual blizzard of commercial breaks, some long enough to walk the dog, wash the car, re-paint the basement and fix a five course snack. (And they wonder why viewership is dropping?)
Checking back in the room during one of these marathons to see if programming had resumed, I caught either a crawl or a voiced teaser, can’t remember which, from the KSTP, Channel 5, Eyewitness news room. Something about “Al Gore”, “controversial” and “global warming”.
The teaser worked. Knowing KSTP is, shall we say, “challenged” on the notion of global climate change, i.e. The Hubbards don’t believe in it, I knew I’d have to stay tuned to see the twist KSTP would put on an Al Gore Capitol Hill performance. I was not disappointed.
So “Lost” signs off and we begin the usual Eyewitness News hit parade of mayhem; near abductions of innocent children, terrified neighborhoods, murders, fear, attempted murders, plagues of venomous snakes, (I’m making that up), and on and on making the Twin Cities sound worse than Al Anbar province until we finally get to reporter Tim Sherno(*) in St. Louis Park. Sherno has a story about one wingnut protesting the city’s plan to show, “An Inconvenient Truth” at some civic venue. The guy is thumping the “teach both sides” argument. You know, like the “theory” of evolution vs. creationism, the “theory” of gravity vs. non-gravity, etc. He is one guy in a basement vs. City Hall — but Eyewitness News smells news and believes in balance. Al Gore movie? A guy in a basement complaining about it. Equal time. That’s, uh, journalism.
To Sherno’s credit he inserts a clip of the crackpot, “Global Warming is a Fraud”, (not exact title), movie the wingnut wants St. Louis Park to show … as balance. He also points out that … no surprise here … the winger hasn’t bothered to see, “An Inconvenient Truth”, (yet flatly asserts it is partisan, politically motivated, yadda yadda, insert the usual talking points).
With that as a set-up Cyndy Brucato and Leah McClean intro the Al Gore-before-Congress clip, which has Gore in a chair at a Senate hearing with an unidentified legislator — actually renown bonehead, James Inhofe of Oklahoma — the Senate’s version of a basement dwelling wingnut telling Gore he’s just plain wrong and Gore responding with the analogy of the “planet having a fever”. And that’s enough of that. End of clip. A balanced report. One “theory” refuted in the same breath by one person who says it ain’t so. Another bright night for TV journalism … now over to Dave Dahl. “And say Dave, didn’t it snow a couple weeks ago? So much for all that global warming talk, huh? Ho, ho, ho.”
Now, in modern, culturally and intellectually fragmented America, where the thinking of the late Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska has born fruit and every group really can have its own set of facts, KSTP is doing a tremendous service to those who don’t want to know much or be sold this global warming-Al Gore-liberal-hoax bill of goods. (Hruska is the man who once argued that mediocre lawyers, people and judges deserved representation from a mediocre supreme court justice, like Nixon nominee, Harold Carswell).
Of course if you’re “one of those” who watch news to learn more than you already know, you are probably more inclined to accept the findings of the vast preponderance of pedigreed climatologists as opposed to a wingnut or one lunk-headed Senator. If you are, the KSTP version of journalism probably seems a little thin and suspect … which might explain the station’s consistently miserable ratings.
A wingnut in a basement and a bite-for-bite stand-off between a guy who has studied the issue deeply and one who hasn’t … and that folks is your community service for tonight.
Not that KSTP was ever in the market for fully-fleshed report on the face off between Gore and the few remaining Congressional Flat Earthers, but it was, by Dana Milbank’s account in the Washington Post’s video section, a lot more interesting and significantly different than KSTP represented it.
* Because he is lawyered to the teeth, I’m required to credit Sherno with the title of this blog each and every time I mention his name.
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