If it ducks like a duck, it must be Al Gore

Follow on Twitter
on October 24, 2009 at 11:56 AM, updated October 24, 2009 at 12:54 PM

This is a quite amusing video, one that teaches an important lesson about the perils of advocacy journalism.

It's a clip from an environmental conference at which self-appointed savior of the planet Al Gore took questions from a crowd of people posing as environmental "journalists."

I put that word in quotes for the simple reason that most of the people who would identify themselves as such are in fact activists of some sort. We real-life journalists are skeptical of everything and follow the dictum "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

If you've been reading my columns, for example, you will note that I am just as hard on Republican politicians as Democrats. That's because I know when a politician is lying. It's not really "whenever his lips are moving," as in the old joke, but a journalist should start from that premise.

However the subspecies of wannabe journalists that shows up at this sort of event consists of true believers, not journalists. Check the first questioner, who asks something that is not really a question but just a big wet kiss for his hero.

Then Gore is shocked to get an actual question from Phelim McAleer, the director of "Not Evil, Just Wrong." This is a documentary challenging Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

 After McAleer asks Gore what he has done to correct the errors that a British judge found in his move, Gore starts ducking and weaving like Muhammad Ali fighting Joe Frazier.

He tells McAleer that the judge actually ruled in favor of the movie, stating that it could be shown in British classrooms.

Not quite. In fact ABC news reported that the judge ruled "screening the film in British secondary schools violated laws barring the promotion of partisan political views in the classroom. But he allowed the film to be shown on the condition that it is accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore's 'one-sided' views, saying that the film's 'apocalyptic vision 'was not an impartial analysis of climate change.'"

That's hardly a victory for Gore. And an analysis of the case by a genuine journalist, the Washington Post Fact Checker, revealed much shoddy work by the Gore team, both in the movie and in attacking the judge's ruling. A Gore spokeswoman, for example, said the judge had not cited "errors" in the film while the Fact Checker quotes the judge using that exact word.

The Fact Checker goes on to note that "Scientists sympathetic to Gore have effectively conceded several errors or omissions in the movie."

No wonder Gore ducks questions on the accuracy of his masterpiece. And when McAleer starts to get the better of Gore on the question of whether polar bear populations are increasing, the conference directors cut off his microphone. Meanwhile Gore gets away without answering the actual question asked: Has he made an attempt to correct the errors in this movie?

So watch this clip and get a laugh at the expense of yet another American political figure given a Nobel Prize he didn't earn.