CyberAlert -- 12/29/1997 -- Weatherman Won Over; Best NQs of 1997, Tenth Annual Awards

Weatherman Won Over; Best NQs of 1997, Tenth Annual Awards

1. The White House got its wish: a CBS weathercaster who heard Gore's environmental pitch in October pitched the liberal global warming line in December.

2. The winners of the "Best Notable Quotables of 1997: The Tenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting" selected by a panel of 54 leading conservatives who served as judges.


1) As MRC news analyst Steve Kaminski noticed, the Clinton- Gore gimmick of inviting meteorologists to the White House so they could hear Gore's environmental doom and gloom pitch worked with one network weather reader. Here's an item Steve wrote on how the effort paid off with a plug on CBS This Morning:

On October 1, President Clinton invited a group of TV weathermen to the White House to sell them on the administration's global warming policy. The strategy driving this invite certainly wasn't to get the weathermen to lend their credibility to the Clinton position; many weathermen can't predict tomorrow's temperature, let alone global temperature in the year 2030. The strategy behind the invitation was the hope the weathermen would echo the Clintonian line during the then- upcoming Kyoto Global Warming Conference in December. At least with one weatherman, the strategy worked.

CBS This Morning's forecaster Craig Allen camped out on the White House lawn October 1 and bragged to host Jane Robelot about his invitation:

"The whole idea behind this, for global warming, is because it's going to have tremendous economic and social impacts if we have to change our way of thinking and our way of living. Whether it be the carbon monoxide from cars, all the smoke from smokestacks out in the Mid West, what it does to farmers, what it does to the coast-land, what it does to the oceans. I mean, it could have a tremendous impact on everybody and that's why the President and the Vice President, as you know, has a tremendous feel for this situation, too, that's why he brought us [weathermen] all here. About 1 o'clock this afternoon when not just Al [Roker] and myself, but many, many meteorologists from all across the nation are coming on down to talk about it."

In response to Allen's gushing, Robelot tried to bring in a little balance suggesting that "global warming has its skeptics. There are some who say that nothing that man does can change the atmosphere." Allen waived her off: "That's right, I've heard that argument as well. You know, you think about it, the temperature, we know the statistics. The temperature of the globe has gone up about a degree and a half over the last couple of years. However, you get yourself an earthquake or a volcano, temperatures go down again. So there you go." Robelot responded: "Okay. You take notes, buddy."

Allen apparently took very good notes because during a weather segment on December 8, following a story on the Kyoto Conference, Allen chimed in:

"I'm glad they're making some progress at the talks, the global warming talks. I fear that, I really do, down the future of weather. But in the meantime, it's kind of cool and chilly out across Tulsa, Oklahoma right now."


2) The MRC's annual "Best of" Notable Quotables issue features nearly 60 quotes, far too many to run in one CyberAlert, so I'm dividing up the issue. Today: the winning quotes in the 16 award categories.

To determine this year's winners, a panel of 58 talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from six to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote. A list of the judges appears after these quotes.


THE BEST NOTABLE QUOTABLES OF 1997

The Tenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting

December 15, 1997 (Vol. Ten; No. 25)

Welcome to the Media Research Center's annual awards issue, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 1997. To determine this year's winners, a panel of 58 talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from six to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote.

A list of the judges appears on the back page. (This issue covers quotes from late 1996 through Nov. 1997.)

The first quote under each award heading is the winner, followed in order by the top runners-up.

-- Brent Baker