Fox and foreign press find fault but climate bill is progress
This week’s Media Mayhem column from the Mother Nature network.
I was so proud of the House of Representatives for its recent passage of legislation to tackle climate change. Finally.
Right-wing media’s overheated response to warming bill
You knew it would happen. But Fox News and talk radio have become a big unhinged over House’s vote Friday in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate bill.
It’s a Wall Street conspiracy. It’s a commie plot. It’s treason. Every year, it’ll cost each family 500, 750, 1,500, 3,000 dollars.
Sometimes, the talking points are a bit inconsistent. But that’s what makes them entertaining … in a slow-motion train wreck kind of way.
Media Matters, the left-wing watchdog site, has steadily pushed out clips of the talking heads, which I’ve annotated for your viewing convenience.
Fox’s Glenn Beck (June 29) issues a “Wanted for being a cap and traitor” poster for eight Republicans who voted for the bill:
More clips after the jump. Read more
Bill O’Reilly bark at Al Gore worse than his bite
Fox News heavily plugged an O’Reilly Factor segment on eco-celebrity Al Gore last night, but the report ended up sounded more like a faint reverberations in the conservative media’s echo chamber.
The report recycled the very same information that was peddled last month by O’Reilly’s guest host, Laura Ingraham. But this time correspondent Megyn Kelly credited Investor’s Business Daily for the information.
It turns out that IBD article didn’t provide any new information, however. Kelly apparently was referring to an un-sourced April 29 declaration on the business newspaper’s famously right-wing editorial page, which said:
When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million. A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. It seems it’s easy being green, at least for some.
The thin sourcing of old news didn’t prevent O’Reilly and Fox from endlessly hyping the planned attack on O’Reilly’s climate change Enemy No. 1. Read more
