Year 2, Month 3, Day 6: Ban Ki Goes To Hollywood

I just finished reading Will Bunch’s “Tear Down This Myth,” and I was already thinking about the disaster that Reagan’s Hollywood presidency was for the country. Then I read this article in the LA Times, about Ban Ki-moon’s heavy lobbying of Hollywood bigwigs on climate change, and was struck by a line midway through.

This is a site-specific version of the generic media irresponsibility/false equivalence letter. Enjoy.

Mailed February 26:

The key sentence in your description of Ban Ki-Moon’s plea to Hollywood figures for support in combating climate change is director David Carson’s remark, “You don’t want to offend your sponsors.” That is to say, television is fed by big oil, and people who work in TV shy away from biting the hand that feeds them. Ban Ki-Moon’s initiative may yield tangible results; one can only hope that America’s entertainment media will contribute constructively to our species’ ongoing struggle with the greenhouse effect, since the nation’s news media have virtually without exception abdicated their responsibilities in this arena. Yes, we need movies and TV to get people thinking about global warming, just as we need good, accurate news on the subject. But as long as those who provide entertainment and/or facts cannot depict climate change as both scientific fact and imminent threat without offending their sponsors, it’s unlikely.

Warren Senders