Misrepresenting Climate Policy, the Associated Press Way

Yeah, this is a hat tip to a 2-day-old Instapundit post, which is eons in blog time, but I thought it worth highlighting. In this story about how the tiny country of the United Arab Emirates beats the United States per capita in putting “demand on the global ecosystem”, this line is mentioned about the second place US.

The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.

But as Glenn notes, based on a passage from what he calls “the not especially Bush-friendly Wikipedia”, that is simply not true. You can chalk it up to “mere” incompetence or “simple” laziness, but it seems that almost always when the mainstream media get incompetent or lazy, conservatives and/or Republicans suffer (and liberals and/or Democrats look better). Honestly, when’s the last time any news source (or your friendly, neighborhood liberal buddy) correctly noted that Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification? If your going to insist that Bush”rejected” it, you must say the same thing about Clinton & Gore (notwithstanding Gore’s “symbolic” signing of it; liberal good intentions don’t count if they don’t produce results).

Somehow, the fact that 80-90% of journalists vote Democrat just doesn’t seem to register with folks like Eric Alterman who insist that the media lean conservative. That Bush “rejected” Kyoto is such a Known Fact(tm) in those circles does make its way into reporting, and it ain’t the only thing that does.

Technorati Tags: Associated Press, liberal media, Kyoto, global warming

Filed under: Global Warming • Government • Media

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