In his 7,000-word Rolling Stone must-read epic that faults President Obama for bailing on climate change, Gore takes shots at the media for being manipulated by “polluters and ideologues.”
Though nightly newscasts feature fierce storms and natural disasters resembling the "Book of Revelation," Gore notes the media never connect the events to warming or downplay that connection as "controversial." The former Vice President wrote:
“As with the invasion of Iraq, some [media] are hyperactive cheerleaders for the deception, while others are intimidated into complicity, timidity and silence by the astonishing vitriol heaped upon those who dare to present the best evidence in a professional manner. Just as TV networks who beat the drums of war prior to the Iraq invasion were rewarded with higher ratings, networks now seem reluctant to present the truth about the link between carbon pollution and global warming out of fear that conservative viewers will change the channel — and fear that they will receive a torrent of flame e-mails from deniers.”
The Current TV boss wants the media to stop treating “deception and falsehood on the same plane as scientific fact” while calling it “objective reporting of alternative opinions.” To Gore, the media have abdicated their fact-checking role, which leads to creation of public policy that “completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false.”
News is reduced to a political game. As an example, Gore gives the debate about whether there will be serious consequences connected to the potential default of the U.S. if the debt limited is not raised. In Gore's mind, there is no question that a U.S. default will have a serious impact on the world's financial system.
“Have we gone completely nuts? We haven’t gone nuts, but the conversation of democracy has become so deeply dysfunctional that are ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired,” he wrote.
Gore is confident that local papers and broadcasters will respond to an outpouring of opinion from readers and viewers who are “fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance to reporting the facts" of global warming.
He wants the media to return to their past role of referee. On global warming, “the scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.”
Gore is doing his part.
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