Global Warming Skeptic Bites Dog

The media loves to exaggerate, or sometimes misrepresent things. Get Religion has taught me to look out for a few things, not the least of which is the headline disparity. Does the headline really match the story? Take this little gem over at AP. According to the headline: Global Warming Critic Reverses Course! The unspoken assumption based on the headline can’t be clearer: the overwhelming evidence of such a hot year has finally helped a renowned skeptic see the light. It doesn’t say that, but the wording would lead a person to assume it. But read the story. You find that he is not a skeptic at all. He accepts Man Made Global Warming, he even believes it is a problem. He just felt it wasn’t as important as other human rights problems, such as AIDS or Malaria. It even ends the story pointing out that many MMGW advocates are not jumping up and down in celebration, and gives the reasons why. Not much of a story, but the media can use it to build that all-important narrative. One more story in the stack that will eventually sink into our collective conscience and say ‘I’ve heard so much of this, it must be true.’ The story itself means little in the scheme of thing. Not much more than ‘dog bites man.’ But the media knows if it runs story after story, however small their connections with the truth, eventually that little narrative will turn into ‘man bites dog’, even if such a thing never happened.