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1. 60 Minutes Champions Al Gore's 'PR Agent for the Planet' Cause On Sunday's 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl delivered a fawning piece on Al Gore's environmental crusade, teasing: "Since he lost the election, Al Gore has become a certified celebrity, a popular prophet of global warming." In the introduction to the subsequent segment, she proclaimed: "When Al Gore ran for President in 2000, he was often ridiculed as inauthentic and wooden. Today, he is passionate and animated, a man transformed." Stahl began the interview by asking Gore about the Democratic presidential race and the possibility of him brokering a deal between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, as Stahl observed: "He's not ruling it out, but he says he already has a job -- as he puts it, P.R. agent for the planet." Immediately following Gore's comparison of global warming skeptics to flat Earther's and those who thought the moon landing was staged, Stahl trumpeted: "What Al Gore has set out to do is mobilize a big, popular movement, worldwide. And his winning the Nobel Peace Prize hasn't hurt, since it's given him more stature and prestige." 2. CBS Follows NYT, Warns More Going on Food Stamps Than Since 1960s Monday's New York Times hyped a dire congressional study, and CBS jumped hours later with a matching story full of anecdotes and relying on the expertise of a left-wing activist -- naturally, unlabeled. "The economic slowdown has left a lot of Americans struggling to pay their bills," CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asserted, highlighting how "a congressional report projects a record 28 million will receive food stamps in the coming year." Leading into a soundbite from a representative of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, reporter Bill Whitaker ominously intoned: "With jobs declining and prices for basics -- food, fuel, medicine -- on the rise, more Americans are expected to turn to food stamps in the next year than at any time since the program began in the 1960s." Whitaker moved on to more emotion, how one woman "is still stretching beans and her budget to feed her four boys and granddaughter," but "with Congress fighting over funding, millions like" her "won't find much more in the pot." 3. MRC's 'DisHonors Awards' Next Week, Time to Get Tickets Short The MRC's 2008 "DisHonors Awards" are next week and seats are running out. We only have a few left. The MRC's annual video awards with the "William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence," this year presented to Tony Snow, will take place in Washington, DC on Thursday evening, April 10. Confirmed participants: Ann Coulter, Larry Kudlow, Mark Levin, Cal Thomas and many more since surprise conservative guests will accept the awards in jest. Get your tickets now. Clarification: The links were flipped between two March 31 CyberAlert items: "CBS Faster to Identify Party of Republican Than of Democrats" and "ABC's Sam Champion Hypes Global Warming for Eight Minutes." The text of both articles appeared properly, just with the wrong headline. The online version has been corrected: www.mrc.org 60 Minutes Champions Al Gore's 'PR Agent for the Planet' Cause On Sunday's 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl delivered a fawning piece on Al Gore's environmental crusade, teasing: "Since he lost the election, Al Gore has become a certified celebrity, a popular prophet of global warming." In the introduction to the subsequent segment, she proclaimed: "When Al Gore ran for President in 2000, he was often ridiculed as inauthentic and wooden. Today, he is passionate and animated, a man transformed." Stahl began the interview by asking Gore about the Democratic presidential race and the possibility of him brokering a deal between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, as Stahl observed: "He's not ruling it out, but he says he already has a job -- as he puts it, P.R. agent for the planet." Stahl went on to describe Gore's activism as a spiritual crusade: "His slide shows are tailored to his audiences. So, as he showed us in his office, when he talks to Evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible...Gore is trying to redefine this as a moral and spiritual issue." Stahl also admired Gore's willingness to spend his own money in a new ad campaign: "He's taking his fervor and some of his personal fortune and funneling them into a huge new $300 million advertising campaign." Immediately following Gore's comparison of global warming skeptics to flat Earther's and those who thought the moon landing was staged, Stahl trumpeted: "What Al Gore has set out to do is mobilize a big, popular movement, worldwide. And his winning the Nobel Peace Prize hasn't hurt, since it's given him more stature and prestige." Stahl concluded the fawning interview by describing Gore's new cause: "He says he's fallen out of love with politics. He's selling a cause now. No consultants telling him what to say or how to dress." [This item is adapted from a Monday afternoon posting, by the MRC's Kyle Drennen, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] For video of the 13-minute segment as posted by CBSNews.com: www.cbsnews.com Here is the full transcript of the March 30 segment: TEASER:
AL GORE: I am Al Gore, I used to be the next President of the United States of America. FULL SEGMENT:
STAHL: When Al Gore ran for President in 2000, he was often ridiculed as inauthentic and wooden. Today, he is passionate and animated, a man transformed. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. And last year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he's a certified celebrity, the popular prophet of global warming. He has helped change the way the country thinks about the issue. And yet, while 70% of Americans believe global warming is a big problem, they still rank it near the very bottom of their list of top 25 concerns. And so, Al Gore is about to wage a new campaign to emphasize the urgency of what he says is the greatest challenge facing our time. But as we found out while spending time with him and his wife, Tipper, for the moment at least, there's another campaign Americans care about most. We were with you in the San Jose airport, and a man came over to you, and he says, "who are you supporting, Obama or Hillary? Who are you supporting? Who are you supporting?"
CBS Follows NYT, Warns More Going on Food Stamps Than Since 1960s Monday's New York Times hyped a dire congressional study, and CBS jumped hours later with a matching story full of anecdotes and relying on the expertise of a left-wing activist -- naturally, unlabeled. "The economic slowdown has left a lot of Americans struggling to pay their bills," CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric asserted, highlighting how "a congressional report projects a record 28 million will receive food stamps in the coming year." Leading into a soundbite from a representative of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, reporter Bill Whitaker ominously intoned: "With jobs declining and prices for basics -- food, fuel, medicine -- on the rise, more Americans are expected to turn to food stamps in the next year than at any time since the program began in the 1960s." Whitaker moved on to more emotion, how one woman "is still stretching beans and her budget to feed her four boys and granddaughter," but "with Congress fighting over funding, millions like" her "won't find much more in the pot." [This item, by the MRC's Brent Baker, was posted Monday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] The front page New York Times headline over the article by Erik Eckholm, a former Carter administration political appointee: "As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record." "That's quite a melodramatic headline," the MRC's Clay Waters observed in a TimesWatch analysis of the Times story, taking on the headline's claim of vanishing jobs which CBS copied with a reference to declining jobs: "For one thing, what 'vanishing jobs'? The national unemployment rate for February was 4.8 percent, unchanged from January. The headline writer's source seems to be a Congressional Budget Office report 'citing expected growth in unemployment.' No jobs have 'vanished' yet, but that doesn't stop the Times." The March 31 story began: "Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s..." For the entire March 31 New York Times article: www.nytimes.com And how did CBS News find Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities? Eckholm quoted her -- and also failed to label her. CBPP home page: www.cbpp.org CBPP's page for Dean: www.cbpp.org The MRC's Waters noted that Eckholm did cite factors beyond the economic slowdown, reasons CBS didn't bother to mention, "such as the fact that governments are actually advertising the programs to get more people to use them." For the March 31 TimesWatch critique: www.timeswatch.org CBS has a long history of hyping and exaggerating the level of hunger in America. A brief trip down memory lane: # The May 3, 2006 MRC CyberAlert item by Rich Noyes, "CBS: Old People Skipping Food, Medicine Due to High Gas Prices," recited: Monday's CBS Evening News inaugurated a new series, "Eye on the Road," the network's latest gimmick to keep people outraged at the high cost of gasoline. Reporter Sharyn Alfonsi is driving from Florida to Boston to find people to complain about the high prices, and she highlighted senior citizens who are ostensibly sacrificing food and medicine because of Big Oil's greediness. Alfonsi featured a poll taken by the liberal lobbying group AARP to supposedly prove the hardship gas prices are having on the elderly. "They're used to living on fixed incomes," Alfonsi reported, "but now skyrocketing gas prices are forcing seniors to make difficult choices. Some are cutting back on medicine, others say they're eating less." As she spoke, the screen showed an elderly man getting food from a refrigerator with "AARP Survey" superimposed across the bottom of the screen, plus the words "Cutting Back" followed by "Medicine 6%," then "Food 13%."... For the previous CyberAlert article in full: www.mediaresearch.org
All of the media have pounced on the Bush administration's desire to "cut" spending on a few programs, focusing on how some small spending adjustments will hurt the poor, but none more so than CBS on Monday night. Lee Cowan devoted a full story to how "the proposed cuts hit the heartland like a mountain of unwanted news, from the soy bean fields of Iowa...to large cities like Minneapolis, where block grant programs help the homeless and the hungry." Cowan, who failed to cite a single proposed budget number, showcased complaints from food bank and health care workers and, led into a soundbite from the unlabeled Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, by stressing how "critics charge the people these cuts hit the hardest tend to have the weakest political voice."... For that rundown in full: www.mediaresearch.org
A CBS promo on Wednesday night promised a look on Thursday night at "hunger in the heartland," but it seems that to CBS America's "heartland" encompasses just two communities in Ohio barely 50 miles apart. Just seven months after 60 Minutes II discovered hunger in Marietta, Ohio, on Thursday night the CBS Evening News delivered a peek at supposed hunger on Logan, Ohio, another community in the Buckeye state's southeastern region. CBS's Cynthia Bowers reported: "Twice a month in this small town on the edge of Appalachia, groceries are given away. You could call it a 'line of the times,' because in a growing number of American communities making ends meet means waiting for a handout." Bowers conveyed an exaggerated claim as fact: "Each year an estimated 30 million Americans go hungry." In fact, that's not true. As even the America's Second Harvest Web site notes, "in 2001, the USDA reported that the number of Americans who were food insecure, or hungry or at risk of hunger, was 33.6 million." Not that they "go hungry," but that, as I recall from memory in looking into this in the past, in answering a survey they say that sometime in the past month they were not sure about where to find their next meal or were concerned about not having enough money to buy enough food. Bowers also portrayed a stark choice between picking of food and the alternative: "So the free food they get free means more money for kids clothing or maybe life saving medicine."... For the 2003 CyberAlert piece in full: www.mediaresearch.org
George W. Bush's America as seen by CBS News: Bread lines, reminiscent of the Depression-era, made up of average Americans with jobs. Over video of a long line in Marietta, Ohio, on the January 8 60 Minutes II, Scott Pelley ominously intoned: "The lines we found looked like they'd been taken from the pages of the Great Depression. It's not just the unemployed, we found plenty of people working full-time but still not able to earn enough to keep hunger out the house. If you think you have a good idea of who's hungry in America today, come join the line. You'd never guess who you'd meet there." While Pelley never uttered the name George W. Bush once during his 12 minute piece, the implication came through. Pelley noted, for instance, how "since 1999, the number of people getting emergency food aid in Ohio alone has grown from 2 million to 4.5 million." Pelley contended in relaying the view of a groups which wants more government spending: "Nationwide, the problem is not just in rural scenes like this. The U.S. Conference of Mayors says the need for emergency food aid in major cities jumped 19 percent last year alone." Pelley's emotions over facts style of reporting included this line: "Pre-schoolers come here with their parents and play in boxes as empty as the day's want-ads."... For the complete analysis: www.mediaresearch.org The "Best Notable Quotables of 2003" with two streaming Real video clips from the 2003 Pelley story: www.mrc.org
KATIE COURIC: The economic slowdown has left a lot of Americans struggling to pay their bills. A congressional report projects a record 28 million will receive food stamps in the coming year. Bill Whitaker has another example of how this economic downturn is hitting home.
BILL WHITAKER: Alyn Luna has been struggling to give her family a better life. But after losing her job as a security guard-
MRC's 'DisHonors Awards' Next Week, Time to Get Tickets Short Less than two weeks until the MRC's 2008 "DisHonors Awards" and seats are running out. We only have a few left. The MRC's annual video awards with the "William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence," this year presented to Tony Snow, will take place in Washington, DC on Thursday evening, April 10. Confirmed participants: Ann Coulter, Larry Kudlow, Mark Levin, Cal Thomas and many more since surprise conservative guests will accept the awards in jest. Get your tickets now. "It was a terrific show...It was a great, great, great assemblage of people... Everybody just had a blast!" -- Rush Limbaugh, 2007 recipient of the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence. Make your reservation today. Every year our gala sells out, so don't delay. Individual seats available for $250. To reserve your seat(s), contact the MRC's Sara Bell at: sbell@mediaresearch.org Or call, 9 to 5:30 PM EDT weekdays: (800) 672-1423. Online page with information: www.mrc.org For a look at all the fun at last year's event: www.mediaresearch.org
-- Brent Baker
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