Today, the Washington Post repeated an old canard about the “deadly” accident at Three Mile Island (in the fourth paragraph — see update below).

If they mean the effects that the media coverage of Three Mile Island had on the U.S. nuclear-plant construction industry, “deadly” is certainly appropriate. But one gets the feeling that they imagine that people actually died.

The Manhattan Institute’s Max Schulz authored a report in 2006 called Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts, which included Zogby polling that found that 38 percent of Americans thought Three Mile Island was deadly in the conventional sense. 

Paul Krugman has a strange, very angry and even borderline incoherent piece today, saying things like this:

“Most criticism of John McCain’s decision to follow the Bush administration’s lead and embrace offshore drilling as the answer to high gas prices has focused on the accusation that it’s junk economics — which it is.

A McCain campaign ad says that gas prices are high right now because ‘some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.’ That’s just plain dishonest: the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn't lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an ‘insignificant’ impact on oil prices.”

Oddly, Krugman then touts the wisdom of promising to adopt cap-and-trade schemes — without mentioning that these policies’ impact wouldn’t even rise to the level of “insignificant.” This should not be surprising from a guy who ceaselessly promotes Kyoto, which also wouldn’t do a thing (look at how well the ETS is working in Europe) but would impose staggering costs, according to none other than his preferred authority, EIA. Who's being dishonest here?

I AM still laughing. It was like getting four suicide bombers to debate whether some Muslims might be violent.

But let shiny-eyed Matthew Ricketson, who once taught tomorrow's journalists at RMIT University, describe what happened at a packed "human rights" forum in the city on Monday.

Wrote Ricketson in The Age: "Gather together four luminaries of the media to discuss whether the media is biased and what do you get?"

Well, Matthew, in this case you get a perfect illustration of that very problem, even before a single person opens his mouth. The roll call of the four speakers just said it all.

Luminary one at this Wolfgang Sievers Human Rights Forum was Michael Gawenda, a former editor-in-chief of The Age who last year admitted most of his staff were "on the left: pro-environmentalist, pro-feminist (and) anti-American", and he himself "had never voted for the Coalition" and "could not imagine voting any other way" but Labor.

No, this is not satire - and the idiocy of such a panel discussing “media bias” is, quite typically, lost on Age reporter Matthew Ricketson:

Gather together four luminaries of the media to discuss whether the media is biased and what do you get?

Well, in this case, Matthew, (and excuse me while I laugh) you get a perfect illustration of the predominant bias of that very media:

Mary Kostakidis, the former presenter of the World News on SBS, chaired the event, which heard from:

Peter Mares, the presenter of The National Interest on ABC Radio National and author of the well received book about the asylum seeker issue, ‘Borderline’;

Michael Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of The Age and now heading the Centre for the Advanced Study of Journalism at Melbourne University, which is due to open its doors next year;

Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University and chair of the editorial board of The Monthly magazine;

David Marr, senior writer at The Sydney Morning Herald, co-author of another well received book about asylum seekers and the 2001 federal election, ‘Dark Victory’, and a former presenter of ABC television’s Media Watch program.

In his "Meet the Press" appearance Sunday, former Vice President Al Gore’s controversial views on the issue of global warming not only went mostly unchallenged by host Tom Brokaw, but were accepted as established scientific facts.

In introducing Gore, Brokaw opened his remarks by describing Gore as a “Nobel laureate, Oscar winner, and crusader for conservation of energy and attacking the climate change that we're all experiencing in this country.”

Brokaw continued by saying: “I think that probably our audience understands that there is a growing consensus that climate change is real. But the debate is how real is it, what are the effects of it going to be, and how serious will it affect us?”

Brokaw ignored the recent disclosure that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 Ph.Ds, have signed a petition that flatly denies Gore’s claims that human-caused global warming is a settled scientific fact, giving lie to the claim of an alleged scientific consensus on global warming.

That question, which hit Gore from the left, was one of the few, even slightly challenging queries. Instead, Shipman tossed softballs, such as asking, "Do you think that, right now, climate change is as much a threat to our country as terror?" The ex-VP asserted that "the climate crisis is by far the most serious threat we have ever faced" and Shipman offered no follow-up. She failed to ask Gore for some sort of evidence to back up this claim or to point out that terrorism killed 3000 people on 9/11 alone. (How many have died from the "climate crisis?)

Shipman simply fawned over the Democratic politician and cooed, "Many people are also talking about the fact that you would make an incredibly effective environmental czar either for Barack Obama or John McCain. Is that the sort of job that would interest you?"

Following up, she speculated, "Are you saying that some sort of cabinet post might, in fact, limit your ability to influence that issue?"

The MRC's Brent Baker covered the similarly fawning coverage on the July 17 newscasts of CBS and NBC.   Read rest…