Corporate behavior misleading public

To the editor:

In 2002, conservative pollster Frank Luntz, in a memo to George W. Bush and certain congress members, wrote, 'Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community” - not true, of course - as a result of a then 4-year-old campaign by the American Petroleum Institute to, among other things, 'educate” editorial boards - like The Gazette's, presumably. (I still don't understand why people like being duped.) But, he warned, 'the science (is closing against us) yet is not yet closed ... therefore you need to continue to make the lack of certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

And The Gazette has meekly cooperated, publishing piece upon piece by such well-heeled front groups as the Heartland Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, which have gone from denying that warming is occurring to, when caught in that particular untruth, fiercely disputing the role of human activity - and, when the coast seemed clear, back again.

So 'journalism” has failed us. The good news: state attorneys general have at their disposal a remedy known as 'charter revocation” which they may deploy when corporate behavior flagrantly imperils the 'public welfare.” It happened when 46 AGs shut down Big Tobacco's propaganda arms; it can and, as corporate money suffocates democracy, should, happen now.

Cindy Adhikari

Cedar Rapids