Dan Gainor's blog

Sooner or later, the talking points will be about alternative sources of dairy like soy or rice milk to reduce our dependence on dairy cattle. At least that’s the crisis the June 27 “World News with Charles Gibson” portrayed.

A report by ABC correspondent Betsy Stark suggested that although Americans are seeing lower prices at the pump, they must face the newest economic problem – the rising price of dairy.

ABC News has only reported the decline in gas prices twice in its nightly newscasts since they began to go down right before the Memorial Day holiday. Gas prices have gone down on average 24 cents nationally and this was only mentioned on two broadcasts.

If think you might be suffering from delayed symptoms caused by a job you had almost 20 years ago, maybe you should testify before Congress and get CBS to do a feature story on you too.

Brent Boyd, a former offensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, “slugged it out in the trenches” during the 1980s and now he feels the NFL owes him restitution – even though the league paid him for his efforts. Boyd, the subject of the CBS report, claimed he just “wanted to get his story out there while he could tell it.” But, CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers forgot to tell us Boyd had previously sued for disability benefits from NFL … and lost.

Make a crazy eco-rule that affects thousands and the mainstream media finds critics – who said it doesn’t go far enough.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome banned city departments from purchasing bottled water, even for water coolers. But that wasn’t good enough for Greenpeace Energy Policy analyst Samantha Rogers.

Rogers told CNN’s “American Morning” fill-in host Rob Marciano she wanted to see the mayor do more than just ban plastic bottles, but to sign a plan championed by global warming doomsayers that would force the city to have more than 50 percent of its energy come from renewable resources by the year 2017.

If you’ve been watching the mainstream media coverage of Michael Moore’s soon-to-be-released schlock-umentary on America’s health care system, you’ve probably been led to believe he is some sort of political genius.

But that’s certainly not the case. Moore used a handful of failings of the American health care system to make a case for a socialized program in the United States.

Moore targets the health insurers and the pharmaceutical industry with a parade of hardship stories, exploiting a few desperate people to make lots of left-wing points. He overly glamorizes programs in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba to convince his viewers there are no hardships in any of their systems.

The energy debate on the Hill could help determine policy and prices for decades. Just don’t expect CNN to report it in a fair way.

Instead, you get Ali Velshi, the ‘American Morning’ business reporter, taking swipes at energy companies and the Republican Party. While the GOP stopped plans for a new tax to pay for more Democratic goodies, Velshi said the Republican wasn’t “particularly sound.”

That’s OK, he also complained that the oil companies are “getting off free.” Apparently, Velshi, not always known for math accuracy, needs a tune-up when it comes to taxes. Oil companies paid an estimated $48.36 billion in income taxes in 2004. They also collect a similar number in excise taxes for Uncle Sugar.

In the You-Can’t-Make-This-Up Department, ‘In the Money’ show reporter Polly Labarre complained employees don’t get enough time off. We’ve got it so darn bad, according to the folks at CNN, “we work more than medieval peasants used to work.”

Ordinarily, I’d debunk that June 9 report, pointing out that peasants had to work dawn to dusk eking out a living little better than slaves. But it’s so ridiculous, why bother?

Like so much in the media, this little nugget comes from another goofy group that the media miraculously fail to ignore. It’s called the “Take Back Your Time” movement. The group has a long list of demands of more time off for Americans and Canadians.

Is Michael Moore a journalist? Well, he’s certainly just as one-sided and biased as many on the network news. So I guess he qualifies in that way.

One thing is certain. Moore, the director of the new anti-healthcare industry movie “Sicko,” thinks he qualifies. He said in the June 1 Entertainment Weekly that he embraces bias and one-sided story telling. “In my case, it’s going to take 20 or 30 years to figure out what I came up with, because while it’s journalism, it’s also satire couple with a large sprinkling of opinion to create a work of art,” said Moore.

At the MRC, we work to make bias history. In the media, they’ve learned to bias history – even Military History.

The magazine by the same name has gone left. How far, as Johnny Carson fans would say? So far that the June issue included several letters skewering it for the “outrageous” switch from a balanced historical publication to another left-wing political outlet.

On a weekend where we honor our warriors past and present, it’s important to note that the left does not. And now they have taken their propaganda to a whole new audience and are trying to alter not just the future, but the past.

I’ve read MH for more than a decade and was infuriated with the magazine’s April issue. It included a Q&A with left-wing Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), a piece mocking the lessons learned from the Alamo, and an article about Napoleonic Spain that somehow included a discussion of the current war in Iraq.

One of the claassic D.C. quotes quipped about “a billion here and a billion there.” It referred to money. We aren’t supposed to be so cavalier when we’re talking about a million here and a million there and we mean human lives.

But that was the way The Washington Post treated the 100th birthday story of environmentalist “icon” Rachel Carson. Carson wrote the book “Silent Spring” and set in motion the banning of DDT that cost millions of lives needlessly.

The Post celebrated Carson’s birthday by barely mentioning that her actions “have remained controversial” and ignoring that the World Health Organization now embraces using DDT.

It must be tough to be a network anchor. Ask John Roberts of CNN. His definition of a “modest” salary is $162,100.

That’s how the “American Morning” anchor described Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) annual salary of $162,100. He also called the Obama family incomes of “$470,000 up to $1.4 million” “pretty modest” during the May 17 report. Roberts used the word “modest” three different times to depict some part of Obama’s financial life.

In other words – nearly four times the median household income. The median household income in the United States is $46,326, according to the U.S. Census. That’s 29 percent of Obama’s “modest” Senate income and about 10 percent of the “pretty modest” amount the Obamas declared as the low end of what they earned last year.

Even when Newsweek presents a global warming critique, it spins it – in this case around the globe. The April 16 issues of Newsweek don’t just dwell on global warming, they almost celebrate it. But while the U.S. edition includes more than 33 pages of warming hysteria, the international edition has a piece poking holes in the climate change dogma.

The article by M.I.T. Prof. Richard Lindzen contradicts much of what was in the American edition. “Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe,” wrote Lindzen.

“What most commentators – and many scientists – seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes,” he added.

If you can survive reading Time magazine, then you should be able to handle all 44 pages of “The Global Warming Survival Guide.” It’s chock full of diatribes, calls for increased regulation and “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference.” Unfortunately, recycling your Time magazine before reading it didn’t make the list.

Time has a bit of a bias – for Mother Earth and against all the rest of us. According to the lead story, “we can also be shortsighted and brutish, hungry for food, resources, land – and heedless of the mess we leave behind trying to get them.”

I could go into detail about all the craziness and discussion of our “250-year industrial bacchanal,” and I do, but let’s explore the fun stuff – the crazy 51 ideas. Readers were supposed to ride the bus, move to a high-rise, pay the carbon tax, skip the steak and only make right turns. (UPS found that its trucks idled more waiting for left turns.)

How many times have you seen Civil War rants about the "backward" nature of the South or Southerners – all linked to the failed attempt at secession? But now secession has to be looked at in a credible way, thanks to The Washington Post, because liberals want to do it.

In an appropriately April Fools Day Outlook column called “The Once and Future Republic of Vermont,” the authors complained about the American “empire” and said “Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.”

Ian Baldwin, publisher of Vermont Commons, and Frank Bryan, a political science professor at the University of Vermont, remind readers that “Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again.” They are unhappy, as are many lefties, because the nation isn’t as left-wing as they want it to be.

That was the headline on the AP story, claiming that Sydney went “black.” The much-ballyhooed event actually fizzled and the same story said “that the city’s patchwork of millions of tiny lights had thinned, not disappeared.”

Still the eco-elite couldn’t grasp that the lights did not go out on Sydney. Sure, the city government turned out some of the lights and so did some restaurants, but the city stayed amazingly bright – unlike the clueless lefties who claimed otherwise.

Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett was there to watch and claimed “It’s an hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate-change action.”

It was Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards trying to revive his ‘70s disco moves and he danced around every tough question CNN’s Miles O’Brien threw at him. Most notably, how much does it cost to pay for energy in the new 28,000-square-foot mansion Edwards calls home?

Edwards tried several answers during the March 20 “American Morning”:

• “It’s actually not bad.” And followed that up with talk of how energy efficient the home was.
• “I’m not telling you. It’s actually, it’s actually not bad. It’s about three or four hundred dollars, the last one I saw.”
• Following that claim, Edwards backed off a bit and said “the power bill is several hundred dollars a month.”

Edwards also claimed he and his family operate the house in a “carbon neutral way,” though he wants to put caps on how much carbon dioxide businesses operate. “We have committed to operate this house in a carbon neutral way which means in addition to using energy saving devices in the house itself, to the extent that doesn’t cover it, we’re going to purchase carbon credits on the market,” said Edwards.

UPDATE (16:10 EDT): Video added.

At least one reporter understands economics. CNBC’s Melissa Francis told “On the Money” viewers March 15 that their taxes were going to get hiked “if the Democrats get their way.” The fun twist? Francis and her colleagues couldn’t find any Democratic politician, strategist or even a think tank cohort to come on the show and tell the American people why raising their taxes would be a good idea.

“I don’t understand. How does raising taxes and stifling economic growth keep America great?” Francis asked her guests, Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth and Jack Burkman, a Republican strategist. The rest of the segment was shooting fish in a barrel, pointing to the economy’s strong growth following the 2003 tax rate cuts.

And Francis proved she has more of an economic understanding than a majority of reporters: “If there were a Democrat that was willing to come on this show tonight, they might say something like, you know, they’re trying to pay for the budget, or they’re trying to, you know, slim down the deficit,” Francis said. “But I was always taught when I studied economics that when you raise taxes, you might end up with less revenue.”

Video clip: Real (1.54 MB), plus MP3 (272 KB).

     While viewers were told that the interview with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez “pulled no punches,” you sure could have fooled anyone watching. ABC’s March 16 “Good Morning America” treated Chavez as a man who “does like this country.”

     She actually meant the United States.

     Flashback to the same network in 2005. Reporter Dan Harris of ABC’s “World News Tonight” was more up front about Chavez in a Nov. 6, 2005, report: “Venezuelan leftist leader Hugo Chavez, who led an anti-American rally while talks for free trade were taking place.”

The Newsweek feature BeliefWatch has become a true intersection of left-wing ideology and non-traditional religious beliefs. Except of course when it comes to bashing conservative Christians. Then it sticks right with the media’s low standards.

The March 19 BeliefWatch by Lisa Miller called James Dobson of Focus on the Family the “religious right's standard-bearer and junkyard dog.” Miller bashed “Dobson's Lear-like fury” for daring to criticize allegedly eco-evangelist Rich Cizik, “the Washington-based lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals.”

Dobson complained that Cizik wasn’t representing evangelicals about the religion of the moment – the environment. But Miller saw red instead of green and said Dobson’s real agenda wasn’t religion – it was politics. “In other words, he’s thought to be a Democratic sympathizer, and in an election season, displays of evangelical unity are critical,” she said of “tree hugger” Cizik.

If you hear Al Gore, Time magazine or the rest of the media echo chamber, then the global warming debate is done. “Case closed,” as the supposedly neutral journalists at Time put it.

Last night, Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” reopened the case – in a big way. ‘Hannity’ showcased Dr. Timothy Ball, one of the climatologists in the new documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

But for all of Ball’s excellent arguments, host Sean Hannity made the best point simply by listing more than 70 names of people “that indeed do question and that are skeptics of this new mad hysteria here” about global warming.

There’s little secret about the media desire to see Al Gore win an Oscar Sunday. Over at ABC, they’ve given up any pretense of neutrality. Just two days before the awards, reporter Jonathan Karl quizzed Vice President Dick Cheney about the film.

In an “exclusive interview” that will likely be broadcast during regular newscasts, Karl asked Cheney about global warming, by beginning with Gore. “Did you get a chance to see Al Gore's movie?” asked Karl.

That was just part of Karl’s timely interview. According to the ABC.com piece on it, Cheney’s view that there is a debate about whether mankind causes warming or not is “a position that puts the administration at odds with the vast majority of climate scientists.”

A December 26 AP story tried to make people feel bad for Ford auto workers stuck between staying with the struggling company and possibly losing their jobs in the future, or choosing up to a six-figure buyout. Workers like this man:

Scott Swiercz, chose to stay at a job he knows he could lose rather than take any of eight buyout options, one of which is a $100,000 lump sum. Swiercz said it feels “100 percent” like a gamble, wrote AP business writer Ellen Simon.

This isn’t exactly Vegas. Most Americans would love to have a chance to get twice the median household income for working at a place for about 11 years.

Evening network broadcasts on the day after Christmas whined that a 6.5-percent increase in holiday spending for 2006 simply wasn’t enough. Ironically, only a month earlier CBS complained that Americans weren’t saving enough money. My colleague Julia Seymour wrote about the “humbug” attitudes of ABC, NBC and CBS here.

 “Stores need more than returnees to turn this so-so Christmas shopping season into one to celebrate,” said Bill Whitaker during the CBS “Evening News.” Later Whitaker added that “in December the sizzle fizzled.”

But on Black Friday, CBS was singing a different Christmas tune:

The 2006 hurricane season was an amazing flop – only nine storms instead of the predicted 17 and none of the hurricanes even made landfall in the United States.

But you’d never know it reading The Washington Post’s Style story “A Dream Blown Away.” According to writer Joel Garreau, we should “Call 2006 the Batten Down the Hatches Moment.”

Why? Because insurance companies are now being more particular about insuring properties on the coasts and are insuring against (that is what they do) the possible dangers of climate change.

Not content with news propaganda on global warming, now NBC has turned the idea into a sitcom plot. On the November 16 “My Name Is Earl,” Earl (Jason Lee) and his brother meet a commune of “hippie people” who convince them in their best Al Gore fashion “we got to keep reducing greenhouse gases and reverse global warming.”

The two regulars had entered the commune to give Earl a chance to make amends to a former stoner name Woody (played by Christian Slater). They (and the audience watching at home) ended up getting lectured about the evils of climate change complete with charts that looked like they came from Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” reporter Mike von Fremd offered a ridiculous comparison between Exxon Mobil and Iceland during a segment about Exxon’s third-quarter profits. Stating that Exxon’s profits of $10.5 billion were “about the same as Iceland’s entire Gross National Product,” was an absurd attempt to persuade the audience that Exxon is making too much money.

Iceland’s entire GNP is created by a population of just under 300,000 people which is roughly equivalent to the city of Newark, New Jersey. But neither comparison has much to do with the price of eggs, or in this case: oil.

     It takes a lot of effort to miss 810,000 new jobs. The Labor Department managed it, but at least they corrected the problem. The networks have over-reported job losses and now this huge piece of good news got lost in the shuffle.

     The October 8 Washington Post highlighted the incredible revision. “Unemployment is down to 4.6 percent, the lowest in five years, the Labor Department reported, adding with some embarrassment that it had suddenly discovered an estimated 810,000 net new jobs that it had somehow overlooked in the year ended in March,” wrote Steven Pearlstein.

     Well, we don’t, but The Washington Post sure does. Remember Gaia – the crackpot idea that “Earth acts like a living organism?” The Post devoted more than 2,400 words to the theory’s creator today with his own loony end-of-the-world scenario.

     Yes, Al Gore fans, we’re all going to be crispy like some KFC dinner. James Lovelock says warming is “going too fast.” “We will burn.”

     The Post piece called “The End of Eden” is particularly well-timed. According to The Australian, “The world's top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years.”

In the summer of Gore, most Americans already know the media and environmental wackos are trying to send the nation down the tubes. Now there is new proof. In an article from the June 3 Washington Post, “Fighting Our Flush Fixation,” reporter Elizabeth Williamson tells us how the left is trying to toilet train an entire nation.

The story shows the rising tide of no-flush urinals and green toilets that the left is now trying to make part of our everyday life. These descendants of the low-flush-that-won’t-work toilets “loom as the earth-friendly builder's final frontier.” This is just the latest of the media craze to focus on obscure ways to save energy, rather than dwell on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of off the U.S. coast.

            Today’s Washington Post provided an ideal example of news priorities in the mainstream media. Howard Kurtz’s piece on the resignation of Ben Domenech, “Post.com Blogger Quits Amid Furor,” earned a spot on the front page of the Style section. However, the Post’s own story about a former member of the Maryland Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pleading guilty to dirty political tricks was buried inside the Metro section. (For the record, since the Post changes story locations in its editions, those page numbers were confirmed from the Post’s own Web site.)