Gore says media miss climate message

Journalists have leaned toward balance at expense of consensus data, he says

By BEVERLY KEEL
Staff Writer

MURFREESBORO — After being the red-carpet darling of the Academy Awards, it was back to reality Tuesday for Al Gore, who resumed his usual role of history-spouting wonk as he addressed a gathering of national media ethicists at MTSU.

Gore was the star of An Inconvenient Truth, which won best documentary feature at Sunday night's Oscars. The film showed the slide show presentation the former vice president has given countless times across the nation.

Back in Tennessee on Tuesday, Gore told a crowd of about 50 people at the U.S. Media Ethics Summit II that the presentation's single most provocative slide was one that contrasts results of two long-term studies. A 10-year University of California study found that essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists, whereas, another study found that 53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed the global warming premise.

He noted that recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth unanimous report calling on world leaders to take action on global warming.

"I believe that is one of the principal reasons why political leaders around the world have not yet taken action," Gore said. "There are many reasons, but one of the principal reasons in my view is more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly — and I say 'rejected,' perhaps it's the wrong word. They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias.

"I don't think that any of the editors or reporters responsible for one of these stories saying, 'It may be real, it may not be real,' is unethical. But I think they made the wrong choice, and I think the consequences are severe.

"I think if it is important to look at the pressures that made it more likely than not that mainstream journalists in the United States would convey a wholly inaccurate conclusion about the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced."

Gore would not answer any questions from the media after the event.