A Lump of Coal For John Yang

On the PBS NewsHour, reporter John Yang interviewed two individuals about Environmental Destruction Agency administrator Scott Pruitt's decision to cancel Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would have regulated emissions from coal-powered electricity-generating stations - one against the decision, one for it.  Opposing the move was Pruitt's predecessor as Environmental Destruction Agency (formerly Environmental Protection Agency) administrator, Gina McCarthy, and in favor of it was coal baron Robert Murray.  While Yang tried to play devil's advocate with McCarthy by pointing out that the energy market is moving away from coal anyway irrespective of whether or not the Clean Power Plan is implemented (it never was, due to court challenges), he pretty much let Murray get away with baseless claims that global warming is a hoax.  Murray claimed, and not for the first time, that four thousand scientists have told him that there is no global warming,  though he never explained who these four thousand scientists are.  He also insisted that the earth is cooling based on surface land temperatures (ignoring the far more relevant concern of warming surface sea temperatures).

Murray could have stopped there, but he also kept defending coal-based electrical power as "low-cost reliable energy" and dismissed regulations as illegal power grabs by the "Democrat Party" (referring to the Democratic Party by its demonym, which does not correspond to the party's actual name, an epithetical trick by the GOP to show disrespect for their opponents - not that the Democrats don't ever deserve disrespect, of course).  Yang simply thanked Murray for his time, and that was that - as if McCarthy's own comments in the debate were sufficient enough to rebuke him.  Except that McCarthy and Murray took turns stating their cases rather than debating each other directly, McCarthy went first and thus gave Murray the last word, and she was more on the defensive than the offensive.  What was offensive is how Yang (below) handled the issue.

As Pat Moynihan once said, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts - and Yang entitled Murray to his own facts.  But even if Murray's argument had been factually based (yeah right), dig this - while it's usually best to present both sides of an issue, sometimes there's only one side to an issue.  And the one side to the issue of climate change is that climate change is happening.  Yang, a seasoned reporter who's worked for ABC and NBC, should have realized that.

Why does PBS tolerate this?  Two words - "federal funding."  Three more words - "Not the BBC."