Power Line does a terrific job dissecting this Associated Press story about a local weatherman who scoffs at Gore's global warming rhetoric.
As I've told many people before, media bias isn't usually so blatant as "all conservatives are Hitler" (a.k.a. nutroots blogs). What one typically finds is that the choice of words used to describe a person, his qualifications, his claims or complaints, his actions, are words which will portray the person in a negative light.
Take this from the article:
Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.
As Power Line notes, the use of "railed" and "long railed" implies that his claims are whacked out and crazy. We don't hear journalists talk about Al Gore "railing" about global warming.
The following paragraph gives Gray credit as the U.S.'s most reliable hurricane forecaster. But the paragraph after that has the punch:
Gray's statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.
So, it's just Gray--a nice ol' guy--versus all those scientists. They might as well have drawn a wizard's hat on Gray and said he was still trying to turn lead into gold.
Is this the worst example of media bias? No, there's worse examples. But it's always insightful to see what the media agrees with and what it doesn't. I'm sure this piece will be played as "balance" for all the pro-Gore articles that have preceded and will follow this one.
But when you hear the global warming alarmists talk about "consensus," remind them that there was once consensus that the sun revolved around the Earth, too.
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