If there was ever a question about the conservative slant of our major news media, we can safely say that this forgotten conversation on July 11, 2007 with Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey should end that debate. If the name sounds familiar, the Lundberg Survey is quoted ad nauseum on CNN and other news outlets about pump prices around the country. What sent up red flags for me were the Lundberg Surveys predictions for higher prices in almost every report and interview, a kind of preemptive tactic to soften the coming shock at the pump. This consumer conditioning wasn’t an accident, as you’ll read in this CNN interview “Chatting with America's Gas Price Survey Maven.”
"Q: CNN-As far as conservation, what are the trends you are seeing?
A: I'm hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. I think that there has been friendly as well as unfriendly brainwashing taking place. And when I say friendly and unfriendly, I'm talking about decades of extremist views that have now achieved mainstream acceptance. And the No. 1 item among those affecting current oil politics in Washington is the boogeyman, also known as global warming.”
Lundberg concludes with this jaw dropping statement:
“I don't accept it as established fact, nor do I accept that it would be caused by petroleum consumption, nor do I accept that the human species should not affect its environment. So even if it were someday to be shown to have some small effect on the environment, I see no crime. In fact, taking into account the many, many millions of people around the world that envy our way of life, it would seem more humanitarian to wish them the kind of plentiful petroleum products and vehicles ... that we enjoy ... to lift themselves out of [a] backward, poor way of life.”
Besides the fact that we should enjoy the consumption of gas and global warming, this begs the question: What does it take in the corporate news media for a source to lose all it’s credibility?
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/07/10/fa.lundberg.qa/index.html
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