We’re being stampeded into global warming regulation now.So said Steven Milloy recently in his "Junk Science" column for Fox News.Com. Along with other "denizens of the creep" columnists like O'Reilly, Gibson, and Cavuto, the remorselessly fanatical Mr. Milloy is devoted to embracing issues that are near and dear to the cold steely hearts of the reactionary right and their greedy corporate enablers.
Milloy routinely attacks the respected scientific world, engaging in stupefying denials that pollution and global warming are connected and finding no correlation between second-hand smoke, pesticides and health risks to humans. Milloy is also a frequent on-air pundit on Fox Noise television, where he is presented as an independent journalist despite being criticized extensively for being on the payroll of the oil industry and big tobacco.
Paul D. Thacker a science writer living in Washington, D.C. who has written for the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Christian Science Monitor and the New Republic said this about the Fox-Milloy relationship,
Objective viewers long ago realized that Fox News has a political agenda. But, when a pundit promotes this agenda while on the take from corporations that benefit from it, then Fox News has gone one disturbing step further.
A Fox News spokesperson stated that Milloy is . . .
Affiliated with several not-for-profit groups that possibly may receive funding from Exxon, but he certainly does not receive funding directly from Exxon” That is not true. In 2005, it was widely reported that non-profit organizations operating out of Milloy's home have received large payments directly from Exxon during his tenure with Fox News.
In 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil gave $40,000 to the "Advancement Of Sound Science Center", which is located at Milloy’s home in Potomac, Maryland, according to the IRS. ExxonMobil also paid another $50,000 to the "Free Enterprise Action Institute", also located at Milloy’s residence. Milloy was a integral member of the so-called "Global Climate Science Team", which was started by ExxonMobil to develop a strategy to influence the media to “understand uncertainties in climate science." The Union Of Concerned Scientists reported that Milloy helped develop the GCST action plan, which involved "investing millions of dollars to manufacture uncertainty on the issue of global warming." Milloy has also been very critical of the Clean Air Act, arguing that it has forced Americans to . . .
Surrender many freedoms . . . and that air pollution in the U.S. is more of an aesthetic than a public health problem.
Another of Milloy’s favorite causes is defending the tobacco industry, particularly regarding the issue of environmental tobacco smoke. He dismissed the EPA's 1993 report linking secondhand smoke to cancer as "a joke." After a well known researcher published a study linking secondhand smoke to cancer, Milloy personally attacked her saying that she . . .
Must have pictures of journal editors in compromising positions with farm animals. How else can you explain her studies seeing the light of day?
Milloy also ran the Free Enterprise Action Mutual Fund along with former tobacco executive Tom Borelli and has also worked as executive director of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), a front group established in 1993 by Philip Morris. Milloy, was under contract to provide consulting services to Philip Morris through the end of 2005. When asked about Milloy’s connection with Phillip Morris, Paul Schur, director of media relations for Fox News, said . . .
Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.
The truth is that in 2000 and 2001, Milloy received a yotal of $180,000 in payments from Philip Morris For Consulting Services.Also, in August 1997, the New York Times reported that Milloy was one of the paid speakers at a Miami briefing for foreign reporters sponsored by the British-American Tobacco Company. The lecture ridiculed . . .
Lawsuit-driven societies like the United States for using unsound science to raise questions about infinitesimal, if not hypothetical, risks related to inhaling a whiff of tobacco smoke.
George Monbiot, a respected journalist for The Guardian newspaper wrote.
Even after Fox News was told about the money Milloy had been receiving from Philip Morris and Exxon, it continued to employ him, without informing its viewers and readers about his interests.
Milloy’s reprehensible vitriol is not limited to oil and tobacco causes. In writing a disgusting, offensive mind-boggling denial of the link between DDT and health risks, he said this in reference to Nazi concentration camp survivors . . .
They were drenched upon liberation with the pesticide DDT to kill disease-bearing lice.
Milloy is also widely known as a paid lobbyist but denies ever lobbying. In a 1998 email response to his registration as a lobbyist under EOP he wrote,
I do not lobby for anyone.
That is not true. The United States Senate Lobby Filing Disclosure Program lists Milloy as a registered lobbyist for the EOP Group for the years 1998–2000. The EOP Group's clients included the American Crop Protection Association (pro-pesticides), the Chlorine Chemistry Council, (pro-chlorine) the Edison Electric Institute (pro-fossil fuel and nuclear energy), the Fort Howard Corporation (pro-logging) and the National Mining Association (pro-miming). Milloy himself was also personally registered as a lobbyist for Monsanto and the International Food Additives Council and additional records show that Milloy represented the American Petroleum Institute, International Food Additives Council and Monsanto.
Fox Noise and Steve Milloy a match made in heaven . . . unfair and unbalanced.
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