By Paul Detrick | July 16, 2008 | 4:36 PM EDT

Although media reports on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) usually contain majestic pictures of animals frolicking, few mention the financial benefits and public support for drilling there.

“[T]he 1.5-million-acre tip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is critical for the health of an ancient caribou herd,” weatherman Sam Champion said on the May 6 “Good Morning America.”

“It’s a safe haven for calving every spring. The same area is valuable for another reason. Underneath it lies billions of barrels of crude oil, as of yet untapped. Oil companies say drilling can be done without danger, but environmentalists disagree. They think drilling would devastate the land and its wildlife,” said Champion.

The Biz Flog, the video blog of the Business & Media Institute, for July 16 focused on what it would take to drill in ANWR and how long it would take the financial benefits to get back to consumers.

By MsUnderestimated | July 15, 2008 | 9:54 PM EDT

Today on Neil Cavuto, Monica Showalter of Investor's Business Daily was on, speaking about their editorial on Nanny Pelosi called "Feckless to Reckless." It's about Nancy Pelosi's recent reckless call to drain the strategic oil reserves in an attempt to answer our problems and pains at the gas pumps, short term. Needless to say, IBD was not impressed; in fact, the article calls for her resignation.

By Warner Todd Huston | June 17, 2008 | 6:05 PM EDT

In February of 2007 a small group named the Tennessee Center for Policy Research published an interesting little story that made Al Gore, the king of global warming alarmism, look a tad foolish. The report that TCPR sent out showed that Al Gore's own home was an energy hog. The TCPR report revealed that Al Gore's Tennessee mansion used more energy each month than the average American household uses in an entire year. In a response to this report, Gore claimed that he was diligently working to make his home more green, but now it looks like Gore is being gored again because a year down the line his energy use hasn't gone down. It hasn't even stayed level. It actually increased by 10%. How will the media handle this bloated increase despite Gore's claims of trying to improve?

In 2007, to a sensational reception the TCPR noted that the Gore family burned through energy at an amazing rate saying, "Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh -- guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359."

By Paul Detrick | May 9, 2008 | 4:15 PM EDT

Gas prices got you down? Ride a horse, says MSNBC.

On a "MSNBC Live," report on "sky high gas prices" anchor Tamron Hall relayed the story of one man who is using a horse rather than a vehicle, but did not explain some important reasons why prices have soared.

"The high prices have led ... one Tennessee man to find a more fuel efficient way to get around town in Bradley County: The guy is riding a horse," Hall said on the May 9 broadcast. "It is cheaper to maintain a horse than it is to fill up a gas tank. He says that it costs $150 to $200 a month to ride and feed that pony."

By Paul Detrick | April 21, 2008 | 12:28 PM EDT

Dan Gainor appeared on Fox News's "Fox and Friends" to talk about the latest issue of Time magazine, which had a Photoshopped cover of World War II Marines raising a tree instead of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Gainor told viewers of the Saturday morning broadcast April 19, "Time magazine basically tried to co-op an icon of American heroism to push their global warming agenda. They're trying to claim that their war against global warming is similar to what our veterans endured during WWII."

He went on to say that there were 28,000 casualties and more than 6,000 people killed at Iwo Jima, exclaiming, "That's real war."

By Paul Detrick | April 4, 2008 | 3:03 PM EDT

You're going to need a few extra bucks to pay for those corn flakes every morning.

CNN's senior business correspondent Ali Velshi let viewers in on an underreported fact about rising commodities prices: the government mandate for ethanol production is making corn and other agricultural products more expensive-making inflation a top priority for Americans.

"Several years ago, we made some decisions about how corn is going to be used to make ethanol, which is added to our gasoline," said Velshi on "American Morning" April 4. "A number of people think that that was meant to reduce our dependency on crude oil. What is does is it takes what is fundamentally a food source and makes it into a gasoline source. That's caused corn to go up."

By Ken Shepherd | June 7, 2007 | 12:01 PM EDT

Color me pleasantly surprised, given the media's past treatment of the issue. The June 7 Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today all gave prominent play to news of a stem cell breakthrough that may make moot the embryonic stem cell ethical dilemma.

I don't have a hard copy of the LA Times, but I know the other papers featured the story on their front pages.

Of course, it appears that the New York Times couldn't let the good news go without a separate Debbie Downer article as counterbalance. Here's an excerpt, portion in bold is my emphasis:

By Noel Sheppard | April 23, 2007 | 12:01 AM EDT

Did you hear about that report released last week from a Stanford University atmospheric chemist demonstrating that the tailpipe emissions from cars using E85 ethanol are actually more dangerous than those using normal gasoline? You didn’t?

Hmmm. What a shock.

Anyway, Environmental Science & Technology reported Wednesday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NB member Dahlia Travers):

When Mark Jacobson heard a venture capitalist tout ethanol fuel as a solution to air pollution last year, he was surprised—and intrigued. Jacobson, an atmospheric chemist at Stanford University, knew that air quality got worse during Brazil's big ethanol push in the 1970s and that the reason was still unclear.

You don’t hear a lot about Brazil’s pollution woes, do you? Well, Jacobson’s instincts were quite strong:

By Noel Sheppard | April 12, 2007 | 11:49 AM EDT

Most people are probably not familiar with Joe Kernen, a morning anchor for the financial network CNBC. On Tuesday, he invited singer Sheryl Crow and “An Inconvenient Truth” schlockumentary producer Laurie David on to discuss their “Stop Global Warming College Tour.”

As Kernen tried to present the skeptics’ side of this debate, the ladies clearly got uncomfortable and, to say the least, a bit defensive with their interviewer.

For instance, when Kernen referenced the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” and presented evidence from it refuting anthropogenic global warming theories, David astoundingly responded (video available here, h/t NB member Sick-n-Tired):

By Noel Sheppard | April 8, 2007 | 1:16 PM EDT

This is really hysterical, and requires all sharp objects, food and drinking vessels to be properly stowed before proceeding.

On Saturday evening, ABC’s “World News Tonight” kicked off its new series “Going Green” with “fresh ideas for coping with the warming planet.”

Quite comically, this was just minutes after anchor David Muir led the program with a report captioned "Arctic Easter" detailing the “brutally cold temperatures across much of the Eastern half of the country…where there could be record lows overnight” (video available here).

Despite this historic cold snap, Muir -- with a straight face, no less! -- astoundingly began a seemingly contradictory segment just minutes later (video available here):

By Ken Shepherd | June 21, 2006 | 5:08 PM EDT

You know the media are overreaching when they start to portray teenagers hunkered over schoolbooks while downing iced lattes at a coffee shop as an alarming thing:

For my full story, click here. For a similar item on the biased coverage ABC brewed up just two days earlier, click here.