Junk Science And Junk News From Fox

On the day following the largest entertainment event in history, the folks at Fox behave with an uncanny predictability. With a live audience spanning 8 continents, four television networks, and record-setting access to live streaming over the Internet, Live Earth took it’s place in history and in the hearts of citizens of the world who care about their only terrestrial home. On Fox News, however, it’s a different story:

Writing for Junk Science: Live Earth’s Gross Groupies, Steven Milloy asks:

“Why is NBC airing Al Gore’s Live Earth concert this weekend? Why are Democrats, who claim to support the Fairness Doctrine, not objecting to this outright gift of unequal broadcast time to just one side (theirs) of a controversial political issue?”

Gross groupies? Milloy was inspired to pen this nonsense by Fox’s John Gibson, which may account for its foundation of ignorance. Both Milloy and Gibson assert that Democrats, as a group, are advocating the return of the Fairness Doctrine. This makes me wonder where they were last week when a majority of Democrats voted in favor of an amendment by Mike Pence to ban the FCC from using any funds to reinstate the fairness rule. We mustn’t let mere facts get in the way of perfectly good disinformation.

Even if it were true, the complaint that Democrats owe it to pollution proponents to allow them equal time during the Live Earth concerts is disingenuous at best. In fact, I would wager that those Democrats who are in favor the Fairness Doctrine would gladly hand over air time to Milloy and Gibson in exchange for a comparable accommodation from Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Carlson, Beck, etc.

But Milloy goes even further to concoct a conspiracy on the part of General Electric, the largest defense contractor in the world, whom he accuses of being in cahoots with lefty environmentalists. He hypothesizes a plot centered on GE’s greedy quest for more green – by which he means money:

“GE’s ostensible rationale is that it hopes to profit by selling high-priced global warming-related and alternative energy products, ranging from solar panels and wind turbines to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and nuclear power plant technologies.”

This is an uncharacteristic attack on the free market by Milloy who is adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The CEI is a radical think tank that is funded by the Scaife family, Ford, Texaco, Amoco, Philip Morris, and other conservative and pollution-friendly corporations and foundations. Since when did these trickle-down economists become disdainful of giant corporations aspiring to enhance income generation? If it were any industry other than eco-business they would be solidly behind the company’s efforts grow their business. But just last week, the director of energy and global warming policy at CEI, Myron Ebell, appeared on MSNBC’s Tucker to denounce Al Gore as a liar who “makes stuff up,” and asserted that the climate crisis is nothing more than a scheme by modern-day Commies:

“Global warming is a phenomenon of the left and the left is all about redistributing income.”

The Milloy article appeared on FoxNews.com as part of a regular feature called “Junk Science.” The column runs once a week with its decidedly rightist perspective on science and the environment. There is no comparable column on FoxNews that offers an alternative opinion. The list of headlines at the site could be reprinted in The Onion without editing and make for great comedy. Yet Milloy seems oblivious to the hypocrisy of calling for equal time from Live Earth while authoring one-sided tracts for Fox News who also don’t bother to provide opportunities for opposing view points.

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