An Inconvenient Smear

The New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote an Oct. 15 column headlined "Gore Derangement Syndrome," which detailed how Al Gore " drives right-wingers insane."

"Gore Derangement Syndrome," it turns out, is an apt description of how certain sectors of the ConWeb reacted to Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism in fighting global warming.

One of the leading sufferers of Gore Derangement Syndrome is NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard. As ConWebWatch has documented, Sheppard is a longtime Gore-hater -- he has regularly asserted without evidence that Gore is only advancing global-warming claims to make money -- and he enjoys copying and pasting any scrap of evidence, no matter how dubious, that there is no such thing as human-caused global warming.

Sheppard got a jump start on the ConWeb's Gore-bashing Nobel festivities by selectively reporting (and misreporting) on a ruling in a British lawsuit attacking Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." In an Oct. 9 NewsBusters post, Sheppard claimed that "a British court has determined that Al Gore's schlockumentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' contains at least eleven material falsehoods." Sheppard credited Marc Morano -- the former CNSNews.com reporter and current flack for global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe who has his own history of misinformation on the subject -- for this information. But he backpedaled two days later; in a "correction" post, Sheppard wrote that the judge in the case "listed only nine key scientific errors." But rather then get to the bottom of the source of the false information he previously peddled -- even though Morano was the source for his original claim, Sheppard mysteriously chose not to blame Morano for it -- Sheppard let fly with the smears, calling Gore's movie "this piece of detritus that should never have been allowed by the Motion Picture Association of America or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to be marketed as a documentary."

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Sheppard wasn't the only member of the ConWeb to misreport the British court ruling: An Oct. 12 WorldNetDaily article stuck with the claim that the court found "11 serious inaccuracies in the documentary"; an Oct. 12 Media Research Center "Media Reality Check" complaining about "adulatory" coverage of Gore's Nobel Prize referenced "the nine inaccuracies a British judge found"; and an Oct. 12 CNSNews.com article by Randy Hall reported the "nine material falsehoods" claim as promoted by Steve Milloy, a conservative activist who has his own credibility problems. None of these articles mentioned the hypotheses that were "very well supported."

No ConWeb outlet, by the way, has to date reported on the motivation and funding behind that lawsuit. In his Oct. 9 post, Sheppard described the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Stewart Dimmock, only as "a British truck driver." The UK's Observer has documented what Sheppard and the others won't:

The Observer has established that Dimmock's case was supported by a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies. He was also supported by a Conservative councillor in Hampshire, Derek Tipp.

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Accuracy in Media hopped on the bandwagon with an Oct. 12 column by Roger Aronoff claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize is "a joke, something that should be fodder for late-night comedians" because Gore won it. He then cited that British court ruling that found "11 inaccuracies," apparently not having gotten the most recent marching orders that there were only nine; unlike, say, Sheppard, Aronoff did actually note that the court also found that the film was "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact."

Aronoff also asserted that "Gore's history of lying could also be fair game" should he decide to run for president in 2008. As evidence, Aronoff notes that "AIM previously published the '17 Lies of Al Gore.'" As it turns out, one of ConWebWatch's very first acts upon its founding in 2000 was to debunk a significant portion of that article. In it, Reed Irvine had listed among the "lies":

* "He uncovered the pollution at Love Canal."
* "He and Tipper were models for 'Love Story.'"
* "He took the initiative in creating the Internet."

As ConWebWatch pointed out, Gore never claimed to "uncover the pollution at Love Canal," only to hold the first congressional hearings on it; he was merely repeating what he thought a reporter had written about "Love Story" (and Gore did, in fact, serve as a model for one of the characters); and no less than Vinton Cerf, the guy who arguably did create the Internet, said: "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."

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An Oct. 16 column by the MRC's Brent Bozell similarly claimed that the Nobel's "prestige has lessened" with Gore's award.

Back at NewsBusters, the Gore Derangement Syndrome level ratcheted up even farther with an Oct. 16 post by Genevieve Ebel. Describing a couple of brief clips of Gore on his Current cable channel, Ebel claimed that Gore was "ooking more like a bored college student making a video in his dorm room or a clip from Saturday Night Live" and that he "droned" and was "languid."

An Oct. 17 NewsBusters post by Sheppard attacked Gore for -- that's right -- getting bad grades in college. Sheppard regurgitated an 7-year-old story about Gore's grades in college to assert that "Gore was a terrible science student, and clearly never excelled at anything relating to what folks in Norway and in the media consider him to be so expert at" and, therefore, that is the reason "why Nobel Laureate Al Gore likely doesn't want to debate any of the myriad of scientists and politicians that have challenged him to such a tête-à-tête regarding his manmade global warming theories." Sheppard then sneered, "this is the man liberals and dolts in the media are willing to bet their very lives on when it comes to complex scientific issues surrounding meteorology and climatology." Sheppard made no mention of his own college grades so he could similarly be judged on his qualifications to write about global warming (though copy-and-pasting is not a program most schools offer a major in).

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2007/gorenobel.html