SOME LIKE IT HOT… Kevin has already linked to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s ads on the alleged “myth” of global warming. The ads speak for themselves. But there’s something else worth noting.
At yesterday’s press conference in Washington to roll out the campaign, spokesmen for CEI lectured the crowd of a few dozen journalists on how “objective” media coverage depended upon giving “both sides” of an issue. Whenever you cover climate change issues, CEI fellow Marlo Lewis admonished, find a second opinion, a dissenting point of view. The media packet included a tidy list of “Frequently Asked Questions” with rebuttals to myriad recent news items on global warming. Lewis said he was offering “suggestions for improving the balance with which the global warming debate is covered.”
The ads may seem silly, but their creators know how to exploit the conventions of American journalism to insert apparent doubt into a debate. There was one journalist who vocally took issue with the premise of the presentation. He was from South Africa.
