The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
ABC’s Blakemore on advocacy journalism for global warming prevention; CNN calls Obama’s $150-billion energy proposal 'valuable'; 'Evening News' distorts severity of food inflation by reporting only highest of increases.

May 7, 2008

The Good
     Granted, ABC News Correspondent Bill Blakemore was not exactly questioning the hype behind global warming alarmism, but he recently said he isn’t going to be an advocacy journalist for the cause.

     Blakemore was a panelist at the forum “Covering a Changing Climate: The Media Challenge” held at Harvard University in Boston, Mass., on April 30. He told an audience it wasn’t his job as a journalist to function as a cheerleader to fight climate change. (Click Here for Audio)

      “It’s been asked of us as journalists, as if we were advocates who are trying to do whatever we need to do to make sure that people prevent global warming catastrophe from happening,” Blakemore said. “That is not our job. It is not our job to educate and it is not our job to prevent this.”

     However, Blakemore has been very critical of global warming skepticism in the past. In September 2007, he implied that the Competitive Enterprises Institute, a think tank that questions the validity of global warming alarmism, was not credible because it has received money from the fossil-fuel industry.

The Bad
     Government meddling with free-market forces can have negative consequences. Just look at how government mandates for corn-based ethanol have affected the global food supply.

      But unintended consequences didn’t stop "AOL Money Coach" Hilary Kramer from calling Sen. Barack Obama's energy proposal "valuable" on CNN “Issue #1” May 5.

     "Absolutely right," Kramer said, "That's why Barack Obama with a $150-billion package that he wants to jumpstart an entire industry, alternative energy and clean technology, could be very valuable, especially matching that up with legislation to force the use of alternative energy." (Emphasis added.)

      Nothing detailed in Obama's plan had any short-term answers to higher gas prices. It assumed the only solution is alternative energy and ignored other proposals such as expanding exploration and refining capacity.

The Ugly
     Although the economy is showing only a slow rate of growth, consumer spending actually showed an increase for the month of March. But, don't be fooled – that's a bad sign, according to "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric.

     "[T]he government reported today that consumer spending in March shot up twice as much as economists were expecting, and it's not because we're buying more – it's because the prices are so much higher, especially food," Couric said on the May 1 broadcast.

     However, crediting consumer spending growth, up 0.4 percent according to the Commerce Department, entirely to food inflation is not accurate, according to economist Dr. John Lott.

     "The first notion that somehow you could explain the entire increase in consumer spending is due to higher prices – if you double consumer spending, the only way that statement would make sense is if the price level doubled in a month," Lott told the Business & Media Institute on May 2.

     Couric also cited a Labor Department statistic that food prices have increased 5 percent annually. But CBS correspondent Mark Strassmann reported only on food items with much more significant increases in prices.

     "Just in the last year, prices of America's food staples have skyrocketed," Strassmann said. "Flour now 49 cents a pound, is up 36 percent; eggs at $2.20 a dozen, up 35 percent; milk – $3.78 a gallon, up 23 percent; and pasta at $1.08 a pound, up 19 percent. Fruits and vegetables are also up double digits."

     As Lott pointed out, the segment didn't look at the whole picture, and that distorts the reality of food inflation.

     "When you're talking about all food, you're not spending it all on pasta," Lott said. "Some portion of it is going up, but oranges have fallen by like 35 percent. You have drops in the price of lettuce and other things, too. An the average on the course of a year is going up about 5 percent – that's the relevant number, what's happening overall with the cost of food, not particular parts of the basket because nobody goes and spends on just those things that are going up."

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly tracks the best and worst media coverage of business and economics. Readers are invited to submit suggestions or news tips to Staff Writer Jeff Poor at jpoor@mediaresearch.org.