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 'Scared Green' - Anatomy of a Corporate Media Sting Operation-If Disney is Such a Friend to Children, Why Does Its Subsidiary ABC Trash Environmental Education for Kids?
By John Borowski
While
in St. Louis this March, at a National Science Teachers’
Convention, I stumbled upon Michael Sanera peddling a book titled Facts Not Fear. For those of you who don’t know, Sanera
is the “anti-eco-education point-person” for the Competitive
Enterprise Institute (CEI), a think-tank funded by the likes of
Dow Chemical, General Motors, Texaco, and those true friends of
education and moral values, Philip Morris. Sanera has a forum
in major newspapers from Seattle to New York from which he denounces
the environmental movement. Amongst all those teachers of our
children, Sanera was like a carnival hack. His manifesto was heavy
on fear, and Rush Limbaugh-like on facts. Jeering at everything
from ozone loss to species extinction, his was a transparent attack
on ecological and environmental education for our nation’s
children.
Intrigued,
I looked up CEI on the net. There I found a reference to “SaveJohnStoessel.org”.
Stoessel is a reporter with ABC news and the 20/20 news program.
He is also a known critic of environmental regulations. CEI was
dismayed at the tongue-lashing Stoessel received when, incredibly,
he reported that organic foods are no safer than foods sprayed
with pesticide. As evidence for his claims, Stoessel referred
to test results which an independent inquiry found not to exist!
In defense of Stoessel, CEI claims in their webpage that he is
entitled to his “right to free speech”. They warn supporters
that “politically correct causes and special interests”
are prepared to place that freedom in “jeopardy”. Excuse
me, but what freedom are they referring to? The freedom to lie
when you’re supposed to be telling the truth on national
TV? In my world,investigative reporters are held accountable to
verifiable sources and factual reporting. Stoessel neglected these.
As
an environmental science teacher and concerned citizen, I try
to stay current with what industry and government groups have
in store for us. Recently I was forwarded an “urgent”
email from RISE (Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment)
beckoning its members to support Mr. Stoessel and Mr. Sanera’s
jihad against eco-education. RISE is affiliated with the American
Crop Protection Institute, a trade group founded to defend “urban
usage of pesticides”. The urgent email explained that RISE
had been contacted by Michael Sanera who was working with John
Stoessel’s 20/20 producers on a program to expose the “evils”
of environmental education. In the email RISE beckons its members
to find parents and their children who have been “scared
green” and are willing to be interviewed. The last line of
the email is telling: “Let’s try to help Mr. Stoessel.
He treats industry fairly in his programs.”
Just
to see what would happen, my wife responded to the RISE email
using her maiden name, stating that she is not sure about the
environmental data our daughters are receiving in school. Soon
we received an email back, giving us Michael Sanera’s phone
number and urging us to contact him.
I
was pondering all of this on April 9th when, incredibly, producer
Ted Balaker of ABC News called me out of the blue. He told me
that ABC respected my editorials on environmentalism and they
wanted to ask me questions about ecological issues. Point-blank
I asked if there was a “Sanera connection”? He told
me he’d never spoken to Sanera. I asked, did ABC call me
to entrap me in a “Scared Green” environmental education
piece, where Stoessel could manipulate the truth? He said no,
there was no such project.
Suspicious,
I called Michael Sanera as soon as I was off the phone with Balaker,
following up on my wife’s email exchange with RISE. I told
him my children brought home environmental education information
from school and what should I do about it. Sanera was very enthusiastic,
asking me if I would speak about this with ABC. He assured me
that John Stoessel’s producer from ABC would call me. The
producer’s name? None other than a “Mr. Ted Balaker.”
Balaker had lied to me and I had to find out why.
Corporate
Web of Deceit: The Big Picture
The last several years have seen corporate America attempt to
“manufacture” consent by flooding schools with dubious
environmental materials. MTV style videos, “mono-syllabic”
fill-in sheets and activities that disparage everything from global
warming to deforestation. These passive “educational materials”
are a subterfuge designed to keep our youngest citizens comfortably
numb. With critical thinking dulled, how could any warning about
impending environmental woes be taken seriously, when children
have been assured by the timber, chemical and tobacco industries
that “it’s all good?”
Games
People Play
Those who procure children as pawns, who exploit their innocence
for profit, and pervert truth for self-serving gain, are usually
met with repulsion from society. Such abuse of children is at
its worst when the victimizer is a supposed friend. But there
is one class of citizens in our society that is apparently exempt
from this community standard: corporate citizens.
Case
in point: Media titan Disney Corporation, using its television
outlet, ABC, is seeking to drive a stake through the collective
heart of environmental education. Their strategy is simple: get
some of the most notorious polluters to fund think-tanks to produce
data and promote it as “good science”. Then stage events
that show kids “scared green” by “doomsday”
education. Let John Stoessel, popular investigative reporter for
20/20, manipulate the kids, creating a “prime time”
illusion, a proverbial TV moment.
I
am quite certain that Stoessel’s team from ABC had me and
my environmental education classes at North High targeted for
the Scared Green piece. My questions about Sanera must have convinced
the Disney/ABC team to hunt new prey.
They
found it in Los Angeles, California on Earth Day.
In
May I received a call from a traumatized mother/Earth Day organizer
in LA who told me a chilling story. Just like me, she’d been
contacted by ABC about doing a student interview. Unsuspecting,
she agreed to the interview.
On
April 20 & 23, a group of children, ages 8-11, eagerly awaited
the opportunity to discuss the environment on TV. Their interviewer?
John Stoessel. Deftly, what had been represented to be a program
showcasing the children’s fluency in science was turned into
a witch hunt. Stoessel set the tone and agenda. Leading them on
with hooks like, “It sounds so terrible, aren’t you
scared?”, he manipulated them into saying they were afraid
in front of the camera. Then, quoting statistics from Sanera’s
Facts Not Fear, he “proved” there is no environmental
crisis, that recycling is a “sham”, that caribou herds
have increased since drilling for oil began in Alaska, etc. Not
once did he focus on the confident place the children spoke from...their
hearts and minds. He intimidated the children so that their grasp
of issues, like the considerable downsides of fossil fuels, was
never addressed. He went on to question the motives of their teachers
and advisors, accusing them of exploitation. The mirage of film
editing will no doubt show the children in the poorest light.
I
have no doubt that “Scared Green” will be deeply critical
of environmental education. But when it is aired, will there be
equal time for the defenders of environmental education? Will
educators like me, who directly experience the power and enlightenment
of environmental science classes everyday, have the time, access
and money to counter this onslaught of formidable critics and
slanted facts? Don’t bet on it. The Stoessel, Sanera and
Disney/ABC connection demonstrates that money and power guarantee
access to a giant public audience with no rebuttal. In the end,
somewhere between the commercials and the spin, the truth will
shrink to invisibility in this “age of information”.
I
don’t lose hope, though, because in classrooms around the
country there are dedicated teachers who enlighten their “charges”
with credible and sound data. No preaching from the pulpit, or
buying access to speak—no, these teachers just provide the
skills to young people to make rational and sound decisions on
ecological issues. This is what the foes of environmental education
fear the most.
I
pray each night that media dedicated to truth will have the courage
to print probing stories. What does it take to get their attention?
Burning Disney characters and Stoessel effigies in front of ABC
corporate buildings? Boycotting network TV channels?
When
environmental crimes or abuses of power occur in a free society,
headlines describing these events should blaze across page one.
Sadly, the despoilers of nature try to buy or bury any media vehicle
that seeks open discussion. They try to discredit education that
teaches critical thinking. They seek to convince the public to
accept a status quo good for industry profits, as if our children
are no more than statistics on a corporate balance sheet.
John
Borowski is a teacher at North Salem High School in Salem,
Oregon. He can be reached via email at "wolf pack" jenjill@proaxis.com
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