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.
