PBS is an American treasure.
Regarding the Jan 31 American Experience “The Greely Expedition,” it was a marvelous show, offering us a full range of details, including an even-handed account of the way society treated the survivors. But then the program tossed out this whopper: “Michael Robinson, Historian: We are now using Greely’s data to understand how global warming happens, to understand how the climate has changed over the last hundred years. The irony is that the data is of interest today but not because it offers the key to an understanding of nature, but because it offers a key to how human beings have changed nature.”
Am I off base to interpret a historian is essentially telling us we have an opportunity to understand how global warming happens as a result of the way humans have changed nature? If the program wanted to maintain its even-handedness, wouldn’t it have been better to have an IPCC scientist like Michael Oppenheimer (a 7-time guest on PBS NewsHour) make that statement, followed by one from skeptic scientist Dr. S Fred Singer (who has never appeared on the NewsHour)?
Which brings me to a larger question: with so many other similar statements creeping into PBS nature programs, such as the Wolverine program (at the 39:14 mark) and the continued lack skeptic scientists offering lengthy analysis at the NewsHour, how does PBS avoid perception of outright bias on the issue? With additions like Miles O’Brien at the NewsHour, isn’t this perception increased, considering O’Brien’s decidedly anti-skeptic CNN presentation in 2005 called “Melting Point,” where anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan — who turns out NOT to be a Pulitzer winner despite widespread descriptions to the contrary — was allowed to make unsupported accusations against skeptic scientists, the basis of which were unquestioned by O’Brien?
Russell Cook, Phoenix, AZ
The PBS response :
He hears ya! Time to turn the channel. Maybe he’ll hear that….. right after we cut the funding for such advocacy.
If you defund NPR, you’ll never again get to experience the unique sounds of the Flea-Infested, Methadone-Addled, Lesbian, Feminist-Anarchist* Autoharp Choir again. If you defund PBS, the $20,000,000/yr cash cow that disguises itself as an obese, puce avian will have to live purely on the obscene proceeds from its own massive marketing campaign instead of getting advertising gratis (at the expense of a few $100,000/yr from the taxpayers, via the NEA and other shell-charities).
*I hear this year they’re doing a song cycle of Kathy Acker novels (skipping over Pussy, King of the Pirates as that has already been ably rendered by the Mekons).
l can’t wait to see the quality programming we purchased for this communist propaganda machine.
I just realized I should have worked harder on my alliteration and gone for the “porcine, puce passerine”. C’est la merde.
There’s a difference between hearing and listening!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3YfAu2dIV4
Didn’t the B in PBS stand for “Bias”? And what are you complaining about, much better “I hear you on your concerns” than “You b*stard baby-polar-bear-killing denialist…we’ll make you and your family explode as soon as we get a good hold on power”?
I hope he wiped well after ejecting those words of wisdom from his nether region. PBS= Pure Bull $$$$.
I can’t believe PBS continues gets tax money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erwemrOE4C8&NR=1
My thanks to Steve for picking up that online letter to the PBS Ombudsman from February, seen partway down the page here: http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/2011/02/the_mailbag_are_hosts_having_too_much_fun_1.html
All part of my ongoing attempts to get the NewsHour to explain themselves – my first online Ombudsman letter appearance prompted me to write my first American Thinker piece in Dec ’09 on the narrow topic of the smear of skeptic scientists, see “The Lack of Climate Skeptics on PBS’s ‘NewsHour’ ” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html In August 2010, I had a follow-up: “The iceberg treatment: The congressman, the iceberg, and a PBS freeze-out” http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/the_iceberg_treatment.html
Stay tuned. This hasn’t ended yet. The snail mail response you see from Jim Lehrer above was to a very detailed 1100 word snail mail I sent to him directly on the whole problem, since I couldn’t get anything less than a sidestepped response from the NewsHour National Affairs Editor.
If the NewsHour ultimately admits it needs to re-examine skeptic scientists’ role in this whole so-called global warming crisis, can you imagine the fallout with the rest of the mainstream media?