Topic: Media Research Center
Noel Sheppard complained in a May 18 NewsBusters post that "our nation's media couldn't care less" about "an international conference discussing the scientific holes in the theory of man-made global warming." Sheppard is referring to the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, spearheaded by the right-wing deniers at the Heartland Institute.
While Sheppard ignores the institute's political leanings and downplays the biased, deniers-only nature of the conference, he does let slip -- though not until his final paragraph -- one reason why the conference has been ignored by "our nation's media": "Readers are advised that the Media Research Center is a co-sponsor of this conference."
That's right -- the MRC is helping to fund this biased conference.
But it seems that if this conference is so important to right-wingers, the right-wing media should be covering it as well. But it isn't.
CNSNews.com isn't covering the conference, even though its MRC parent is funding it. The MRC's Business & Media Institute has published several articles by Jeff Poor from the conference, but at no point in any of these articles does Poor disclose that the MRC is funding what he's writing about.
The only other ConWeb component we've seen covering the conference is WorldNetDaily, which sent Jerome Corsi to it. As we've noted, Corsi promoted a claim by one scientist at the conference without reporting that a previous claim the scientist made has been discredited.
This is not the first time that Sheppard has complained about media coverage of a subject that his own media has also ignored. On May 5, Sheppard lamented that "you may not know much about" devastating flooding in Nashville because of "all the attention media have given to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the failed car bomb attempt in New York's Times Square." Sheppard was followed by a NewsBusters complaint by Charlie Daniels that the flooding was "never really trumpeted in the national media."
But as Media Matters' Eric Boehlert pointed out, the Nashville flooding received even less coverage from right-wing news outlets such as the Washington Times and the New York Post, and Fox News ran half as many segments on the flooding that CNN did.
If the right-wingers' own media won't cover Sheppard's favorite subjects, what right does he have to complain that the "mainstream" media isn't covering them?
