Austin Paper Masquerades Green Propaganda as 'News'

June 22nd, 2007 9:17 AM

Meet the Greenes, "an American family trying to do their best to help the environment by living a green life. Take a virtual tour of their earth-friendly home and discover all the ways they conserve resources, pollute less and leave a smaller eco-footprint."

This welcoming banner sounds like something you'd see on Greenpeace.com or Climatecrisis.net (Admit it, you've been there, I go all the time to laugh at the latest ridiculous global warming headlines.)

Unfortunately "Meet the Greenes" is prominently displayed on the Web page of a major news organization. The offender? Statesman.com, the Austin American-Statesman’s home on the Internet.

"Meet the Greenes" is just one of the many delightful headlines in the "Living Green" section.

Where is this section located? It's not found under "opinion" or "blogs" section. Nope, instead it’s nestled prominently between "state" and "elections" under the "news" drop down menu. News? Apparently the motto "everything is bigger in Texas" also applies to BS.

The site was not designed by Internet pioneer Al Gore, it just reads that way.

There's "Salsa Verde," a collection of blogs that are described as "commentary on green goings-on from deep in the heart of Texas" links to five "green blogs" an "earth issues" section which highlights environmentally relevant AP stories and links to plenty of "green sites" like Earth911 and TreeHugger (to name a few).

Also featured is an environmental quiz which asks: "How green are you?" and there's even a blog for the community so that they can air their own breaking environmental news, sample post "Alternative Cabinet materials."

One thing you will not find, a single counterpoint to the global warming hysteria. Not a single mention of the "Father of climatology dismissing global warming as hooey" or "possible problems with the temperature measurements of the NOAA weather stations."

An unbiased reader who stumbled across this site might accidently think that global warming is a scientific consensus. I mean any responsible section that claims itself to be "news" would have opposing viewpoints right?

Maybe they should move the link to the "opinion" section or better yet, how bout making a new section just for the site, they could call it "propaganda."