Friday, June 6, 2008

Where is the media "watchdog"?

I was always led to believe the media was the skeptical watchdog that always sifted through the biases and personal agendas behind the news stories to get at "the truth" of what was being reported.

Yet with global warming, they seem to give the High Priest of Environmentalism, Al Gore, a complete pass!

Here's a hypothetical for you: Assume I had Gore's high-profile status and access to the media. Now supposed I traveled around the world telling people that aliens were in the process of quietly and surreptitiously stealing our atmosphere and that if we didn't do something about it NOW our planet would be uninhabitable in 50-100 years.

Now suppose that the "solution" to this problem was for everyone to purchase (on a daily, weekly or monthly basis) a new device called a "wonklet " that you could hang outside your home or off your car antenna that would fend off these aliens. Also suppose I had hundreds of scientists confirm that "the science was settled" that our atmosphere was being stolen by these aliens.

I appear before congress urging urgent legislation that requires everyone to purchase and use these wonklets. Companies are required to buy them (or trade their wonklets with others), then make them available to their customers...or at least bake the cost of the company's wonklets into the prices they charge all their customers.

I then spend $300M on print and television ads telling the country how bad the atmosphere-stealing-alien problem is and how wonklets are the key to saving the planet. I even have ultra-left-wingers appearing with ultra-right-wingers in the TV ads to highlight how important it is for all of us to work together on this hyper-critical problem.

Now, also suppose I had a financial interest in the company that designed the wonklet, and I had invested heavily in the manufacturer of them. If the legislation I'm advocating passes, I stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars. (I've already made over $100M just talking about the atmosphere-stealing alien problem. I even made a movie about it with really big charts and graphs!)

How long do you think I'd be allowed to promote the wonklet solution without some journalist actually pointing out my enormous financial interest in the solution I was promoting?

I suspect it wouldn't be long.

So why does Saint Al get a pass on his investments in cap-and-trade brokering companies and "green energy"?

1 comment:

Rick Frea said...

Excellent post. You make a great point.