Is Media Helping Advance Obama's Energy Agenda by Spreading Global Warming Propaganda?

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," July 1, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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JUAN WILLIAMS, GUEST HOST: In the "Impact" segment tonight: Is the liberal media helping Barack Obama advance his energy agenda by spreading global warming propaganda? Joining us now from North Carolina, my friend Bernie Goldberg, the author of the best-selling book, "A Slobbering Love Affair." Bernie, thanks so much for coming in.

BERNIE GOLDBERG, FNC CONTRIBUTOR: My pleasure, Juan.

WILLIAMS: Now Bernie, I don't know if you saw this, but Scott Pelley of "60 minutes" recently wrote that when he was doing a piece about global warming, he would not, in fact, interview anybody who had any doubts as to the veracity of the global warming charge. He said that would be like doing a piece about the Holocaust and talking to Holocaust deniers. Can you believe this?

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GOLDBERG: Yeah. Yeah, I can because I read the interview and I saw the piece he did. It was a completely one-sided piece about global warming. And when he was questioned about it, he said precisely what you just reported, that if I interview somebody who believes in the Holocaust, do I have to find in the name of balance a Holocaust denier. This amounts to journalistic malpractice. It's as simple as that. Journalists need to do a little reporting and not merely be cheerleaders for Al Gore and Barack Obama's version of manmade global warming. And if they did some reporting, they would learn that the number of skeptics of manmade global warming is rising. It's growing, the number of skeptics. And these include some very prestigious scientists. But you don't see a lot of that on page 1 of the newspaper. And if they did some real reporting, they would find out that in the past 10 years, the world temperatures haven't gone up but may have even come down a little bit. But you don't hear that on the evening news.

Juan, we're going — this is deja vu all over again. This is the 1970s when journalists warned us of another climate, you know, catastrophe that was coming. That time it was global cooling, and they warned us of the coming ice age. They were wrong about that. They never looked back. They never apologized. And if and when they're wrong about this, they'll just move on to the next crisis.

WILLIAMS: Now Bernie, let me just protect you. You're not saying they're wrong. You're just saying there are two sides to the story, because the U.N. scientists, the G8 scientists, they've all said that air temperatures are rising, ocean temperatures are rising. You see ice caps melting. You're not saying you know. You're just saying let's give everybody a fair say.

GOLDBERG: Thank you for clarifying that. I am, needless to say, I am not a scientist. I am willing to accept that there are two sides to this story and both sides have legitimate scientists arguing their point, but you wouldn't know that from the mainstream media. That's by and large.

WILLIAMS: Bernie, let me ask you about the politics of this, because to me, the numbers are very interesting. If I am talking to Republicans, Republicans, Bernie, 60 — I think it's something like 48 percent say yes to global warming. There is global warming. If I'm talking to independents, 67 percent say yes, there is global warming. But if I'm talking to Democrats, Bernie Goldberg, then I'm up to 87 percent say yes to global warming. Why do you get 48 percent of Republicans saying yes, it might be global warming, but 87 percent of Democrats? Why the politics around this?

GOLDBERG: That's a very good question. I think it has something to do with the media again. Republicans are less likely to believe or accept hook, line and sinker what the media tells them. And liberal Democrats are more likely to believe it because a lot of the media is made up of liberal Democrats. So I think the filter that we get this global warming that it comes through is the media. And a lot of us on the right, we don't trust the media as much as liberal Democrats do. And again, Juan, the media gets a lot of these things wrong. They got global cooling wrong. Why should we necessarily believe that they got this story right? And what bothers me the most about this is that they have absolutely fallen into line with Al gore's version of global warming, that it's manmade, case closed. I don't want to hear about it. Scott Pelley's example is the best one you can come up with.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, so you're an earth is flat kind of person if you disagree with Al Gore. All right.

GOLDMAN: Exactly, exactly.

WILLIAMS: Let me move on. Let me move on to the Ricci case, because I saw that you had written about your brilliant idea for how we can advance affirmative action in this country. Go right ahead. I'm going to give you the floor.

GOLDMAN: OK, thank you for that. For the past 40 years, we have tried affirmative action to make things more equal in the workplace at universities and in the culture at large. OK, that's fine, but nobody's happy with it. The opponents of affirmative action aren't happy with it, because they say it's nothing more than racial discrimination, but against white people. And the supporters of it, the proponents aren't even happy because they say it hasn't gone far enough. So I came up with a plan. Forgive me. It's a brilliant plan. Here it is, Juan. Every white person in America who thinks that affirmative action is a good thing, that it makes America a better place, voluntarily gives up his and her job immediately, right now, on one and only one condition: that they be replaced by somebody who isn't white. That way by tomorrow or the next day, we'd have a lot more blacks, a lot more Hispanics, a lot more other minorities in very important positions in the work force.

WILLIAMS: Bernie, hold on. Aren't you mocking the seriousness of this? Because to my mind, look, there have been barriers. You know if you go in most police departments in this country, they're dominated by the Irish, the Italians. Maybe you have a black police chief show up after their charges of brutality or riot, but the fact is doors have been closed, Bernie.

GOLDBERG: Listen, we have an ugly racial history. That's not the point. We're talking about — at least my plan is addressing liberal — liberal — white liberal hypocrisy because when I put this plan to two TV executives, one who used to work at CBS and the other at NBC, neither — let's just say they weren't amused because white liberals don't want to pay a price for — they just want to dole out their racial goodies, but they don't want to pay a personal price. If they had to lose their job to make America more diverse, they don't want to do that. They want other people to pay the price but not them.

WILLIAMS: I think we've seen that kind of hypocrisy before in busing situations, Bernie.

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