Meet the Greenes, "an American family trying to do their best to help the environment by living a green life. Take a virtual tour of their earth-friendly home and discover all the ways they conserve resources, pollute less and leave a smaller eco-footprint."
This welcoming banner sounds like something you'd see on Greenpeace.com or Climatecrisis.net (Admit it, you've been there, I go all the time to laugh at the latest ridiculous global warming headlines.)
Unfortunately "Meet the Greenes" is prominently displayed on the Web page of a major news organization. The offender? Statesman.com, the Austin American-Statesman’s home on the Internet.
"Meet the Greenes" is just one of the many delightful headlines in the "Living Green" section.
Where is this section located? It's not found under "opinion" or "blogs" section. Nope, instead it’s nestled prominently between "state" and "elections" under the "news" drop down menu. News? Apparently the motto "everything is bigger in Texas" also applies to BS.
The site was not designed by Internet pioneer Al Gore, it just reads that way.
There's "Salsa Verde," a collection of blogs that are described as "commentary on green goings-on from deep in the heart of Texas" links to five "green blogs" an "earth issues" section which highlights environmentally relevant AP stories and links to plenty of "green sites" like Earth911 and TreeHugger (to name a few).
Also featured is an environmental quiz which asks: "How green are you?" and there's even a blog for the community so that they can air their own breaking environmental news, sample post "Alternative Cabinet materials."
One thing you will not find, a single counterpoint to the global warming hysteria. Not a single mention of the "Father of climatology dismissing global warming as hooey" or "possible problems with the temperature measurements of the NOAA weather stations."
An unbiased reader who stumbled across this site might accidently think that global warming is a scientific consensus. I mean any responsible section that claims itself to be "news" would have opposing viewpoints right?
Maybe they should move the link to the "opinion" section or better yet, how bout making a new section just for the site, they could call it "propaganda."
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
I remember the home and garde
June 22, 2007 - 11:07 ET by nnptcgradI remember the home and garden section of my paper (Columbus Dispatch) talking about how wonderful it was to have a dirt floor. Yes dirt. They said how easy it was to keep clean, how convienient it was! If you ignore the fact that your chair legs sink into it, if you're not super careful. If you ignore the fact that they were talking about the SOUTHWEST where it is dry, not Ohio, where it is damp 9 months out of the year. If you accept that you can never have dogs/cats because their claws mark it up. If you don't mind that if you spill liquid on it you have to refinish it. But otherwise it was a great idea!
They also never mentioned how it was like having a neon sign inviting insects/wildlife to move in.
There's a REASON our forefathers wanted to get rid of dirt floors.
Mother nature is a bitch - Ninth Corollary of Murphy's Law
nnptcgrad:Please feel free
June 22, 2007 - 11:41 ET by Ken Shepherdnnptcgrad:
Please feel free to tip us off to biased things in the Dispatch that you think merit NewsBusters attention. I think everyone is well familiar with the bias in USA Today, WashPost, LA Times, and NY Times, but it's papers like Austin American-Statesman, Columbus Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, etc., that need more focus from NB.
Re post: but fitting:Look ove
June 22, 2007 - 11:48 ET by mattmRe post: but fitting:
Look over the descriptions of the following two houses and see if you can tell one which belongs to an environmentalist.
HOUSE # 1: A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guesthouse all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs more than $2,400 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "Snow Belt," either. It's in the South.
HOUSE # 2: Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon under ground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tenn. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas... also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
And it is true: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp