PressEthic

The 30 October 2006 New York Times reported that the general manager for TV stations in Bangor, Maine, WVII and WFVX, has effectively barred coverage of global warming from the two stations' newscasts. Michael Palmer's de facto policy was defined in an email message sent to news staff this past summer, after the stations reported on the opening of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth at a local movie theater.

In his email, Palmer compared global warming stories to the killer African bee scare of the 1970s or, more recently, the overblown Y2K scare of 2000. He also sarcastically referred to the station's reporting at the Inconvenient Truth opening as "'the Al Gore commercial we aired.'"

Palmer cited the stations' focus on local news (to the exclusion of all other news?) and the problematic politicized debate surrounding global warming as rationales for his decision to avoid future coverage of global warming in WVII and WFVX broadcasts. WVII and WFVX are ABC and Fox affiliates, respectively.

This raises an interesting issue -- just who determines which stories are newsworthy? And what safeguards are in place to guard against the undue influence of personal biases -- like those irresponsibly enforced by Palmer at the ABC- and Fox-affiliated TV stations in Bangor?

In a small market, like Bangor, there are just two local newspapers and seven television stations. Of these seven stations, only two -- WLBZ, the NBC affiliate, and WABI, the CBS affiliate -- air locally-produced nightly newscasts that compete with the WVII and WFVX broadcasts that are subject to Palmer's editorial agenda. In effect, Palmer -- with his blatant anti-global warming bias -- exerts influence over 50 percent of the Bangor-area newscasts.

Even in a more diverse, media market with access to many alternative news sources, Palmer's partisan treatment of the global warming story would be troubling and irresponsible. But given the tiny size and scope of the media landscape in Bangor, Palmer's actions are especially damaging.