Budding in.
The Stossell piece wasn't wrong so much as seriously misleading. For example
he showed that kids get very excited about environmental education and
sometimes take action on environmental issues. This has been used for some
time to "show" that EE is indoctrination. When I was doing EE I use to ask
critics if they thought that children using mathematics in everyday life
meant that math was indoctrination? Same issue, different topic. Stossel
claims that EE is "scaring" children into thinking that the sky is falling.
Anyone who has ever done education, especially with younger children, is
aware that the kids are often prone to overstate issues for a short time
after the lesson. Stossel used that enthusiasm to "show" that kids were
being converted into little hiking boot wearing green Nazis.
His coverage on global warming wasn't on global warming at all, it was on
the opinions held by various scientists *about* global warming. His
conclusion, if there is disagreement, then there is no global warming. It
was interesting to see that the scientists did not disagree about the basics
of global warming, only about the details and the consequences. So, you
place your bet and you takes your chances.
I think that like most "investigative journalism" this will go no where.
Stossel will continue to put out this diatribes a couple of times a year,
but no real harm.
My 2 cents.
Steven
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 11:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: And people will believe, John Stossell update!
Lisa,
I have a question for you.
Exactly what is wrong with the Stossel piece? Was it that the information
given to the children was indeed correct? That Stossel seemed to be
lumping all environmentalists into one catagory (Extremist who use
propaganda to scare The Children (TM))? That Stossel is saying
environmental education in general is bad?
Further, was the information that the children were given correct or not,
or partial correct?
Just curious, because I don't have any television reception and didn't
watch the show.
Steve
--- Lisa Dangutis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Cal Thomas
> July 5, 2001
>
> John Stossel's Environmental Expose
>
> While watching John Stossel's ABC News special, "Tampering With
> Nature," I felt like a citizen of those not-so-long-ago "captive
> nations" who learned the truth of what was going on not from their
> own leaders and the controlled media, but from the Voice of America
> and Radio Free Europe.
>
> In one hour last Friday (JUNE 29), Stossel exposed the propaganda and
> one-dimensional perspective about the environment and biotechnology
> that has caused millions of schoolchildren to repeat the information
> they've been spoon-fed in a way that would delight a teacher in a
> communist classroom.
>
> The special revealed another point of view that is rarely, if ever,
> heard. The reason these views aren't heard is that most of the people
> who bring you the news and who teach our children are of a singular
> mindset and teach or broadcast only their ideas.
>
> Patrick Moore, a former director of Greenpeace, was interviewed. He
> said political activists have hijacked the environmentalist movement
> and that they are "using environmental rhetoric to cloak agendas like
> class warfare and anti-corporatism that, in fact, have almost nothing
> to do with ecology."
>
> Interest groups, Stossel said, pressure members of Congress into
> voting for things that have little or no effect on the environment,
> but which increase the influence and fund-raising capabilities of
> such groups.
>
> Even if greenhouse gases were restricted, Stossel says reliable
> estimates show restrictions would prevent a rise in global
> temperature by only a fraction of a degree. He wondered if such low
> expectations are worth the potential high cost to taxpayers of
> trillions of dollars and a radically altered lifestyle.
>
> Biotechnology, which is helping to make food more plentiful, is
> another target of environmentalists. Stossel showed that their
> objections have been answered by the very science they decry.
>
> Bovine growth hormone, for example, increases milk production in
> cows, though environmentalists regularly condemn it as harmful to
> human health. Stossel reported that the World Health Organization,
> the Food and Drug Administration and the American Medical Association
> have deemed the hormone completely safe.
>
> The most controversial and disturbing moment came when Stossel
> interviewed elementary schoolchildren in Santa Monica, Calif. Stossel
> told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly that some individual interviews
> had been cut by ABC after an environmentalist group contacted
> and "brainwashed" parents into believing that Stossel was doing
> an "editorial" that would be injurious to the environmental cause.
>
> Stossel told O'Reilly he wanted to show how public schoolchildren
> have been lied to about the environment. He said children believe the
> one side they have been taught of the global-warming argument: that
> Republican presidents are responsible for dirty air and water
> (though, he noted, air and water are much cleaner now) and that
> corporations are "evil."
>
> Even with the interviews that remained in the program, Stossel
> managed to prove his point. He asked the children what they had
> learned, and then he quoted governmental and scientific sources to
> prove the children and their teachers wrong.
>
> He also interviewed activists about their knowledge of the earth,
> food additives, genetic food engineering and other scientific
> discoveries designed to improve human life.
>
> "The extremists dominate the debate," Stossel told O'Reilly. Indeed
> they do.
>
> What else have students been taught and what else does the public
> believe that is factually untrue? It might take years of TV specials
> and a different education objective to cleanse our systems of the
> intellectual and moral impurities we have been programmed to accept
> as truth.
>
> Stossel should be thanked and ABC News praised for allowing another
> environmental point of view to be heard. The environmental lobby
> controls almost all of the media, as do so many other liberal
> perspectives. It is testimony to the power of truth that so many wish
> to discredit and even silence John Stossel.
> ©2001 Tribune Media Services
=====
"In a nutshell, he [Steve] is 100% unadulterated evil. I do not believe in a
'Satan', but this man is as close to 'the real McCoy' as they come."
--Jamey Lee West
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