ABC Bashes Bottled Water Companies, Ignores the One RFK Jr. Owns

As the Business and Media Institute reported, ABC’s “World News” on Sunday castigated people for drinking bottled water.

Yet, it seems the folks at ABC weren’t aware that environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., actually owns a – wait for it! – bottled water company (h/t to NBers lumberjack and dscott).

As BMI’s Jeff Poor reported Monday:

“With every sip are you actually hurting the environment?” teased anchor Dan Harris.

Deliciously, the New York Times reported on June 3, 1999, the formation of a new venture by Kennedy (emphasis added):

IT is a seemingly incongruous image: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- crusading environmental lawyer, member of the famous Kennedy dynasty and potential political candidate -- in a meeting with local supermarket executives to persuade them to distribute a new product.

But the product has a catch that helps the picture make sense. Keeper Springs' Mountain Spring Water is being introduced to finance efforts to preserve and protect local waterways nationwide."This is not just about selling a bottled water, it's about getting out a message," Mr. Kennedy said during an interview at Pace University Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic Inc., where he runs a team that has successfully won more than 150 legal actions totaling more than $1 billion in judgments against polluters of the Hudson River over the last decade. The cleanup of the Hudson River is now a national environmental model.

Using seed loans from friends and family, Mr. Kennedy and other environmentalists formed Tear of the Clouds L.L.C. to introduce Keeper Springs, which is named after the 35 "keeper" groups across the country that protect and improve local waterways. To get out its message in the crowded field, Keeper Springs is introducing a print and outdoor campaign in the New York area, with a budget estimated at $2 million to $3 million that zeros in on the clean waterways cause.

I guess the folks at ABC weren’t aware that one of the nation’s leading environmentalists owns and manages a bottled water company.

Maybe even more comical, Kennedy must have forgotten his involvement with this company himself when he made the following statements at Saturday’s Live Earth concert in New Jersey:

And so I am going to tell you this, that the next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity --- these Flat Earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist --- you send an email to their advertisers and tell them that you are not going to buy their products anymore.

If ABC is right, and bottled water is such a terrible thing for the environment, maybe folks ought to be sending e-mail messages to RFK Jr. to get him to stop selling Keeper Springs, and ABC’s “World News” should be doing a segment on this delicious hypocrisy.

Or, would that be too much like journalism?