MediaWatch: April 1990
Table of Contents:
Earth Day Evangelists
Earth Day Evangelists. Even the individual gurus who inspired Earth Day avoided the liberal label, getting tagged only once in 211 stories. It came in one of 123 stories mentioning Jeremy Rifkin's Foundation on Economic Trends. Barry Commoner, the 1980 standard-bearer of the far-left Citizens Party, received no ideological labels in 39 stories, but was referred to as "one of the nation's foremost environmental consciences" by the Los Angeles Times.
Lester Brown and the Worldwatch Institute appeared unlabeled in 34 stories, but the Los Angeles Times did call Worldwatch "respected" and "widely quoted," and referred to Brown as "one of the world's most influential thinkers." Paul Ehrlich, NBC's favorite doomsayer, went unlabeled in 15 print accounts. But Julian Simon, author of the free-market standard The Ultimate Resource, was not once consulted for news stories in the three papers.
