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Dec. 14, 2004 A few days ago, Fox ran a story on ANWR, the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. At issue (still) was whether or not to drill for known reserves beneath a 2000-acre segment of ANWR located along the Arctic Ocean in the extreme northwest corner of the reserve. In describing the issue--fairly, as it turned out--Fox fell into the old, liberal trap of showing pictures of snow-capped mountains, crystaline, pristine rivers, caribou, grizzly bears and other wildlife--none of which live for very long in the area in question. In fact, there are no mountains even VISIBLE from anywhere in the area in which drilling is being proposed and, in the summer months, wildlife avoids the area like the very plague since it's infested with the worst swarms of mosquitos anywhere in the North American continent. Then, for about 9 months out of the remainder of the year, it remains frozen tundra that briefly provides forage for part of the Porcupine Caribou herd as it migrates through the area in the early Spring. By giving the viewers visions of beautiful, pristine mountain streams and playful caribou calves, Fox has added to the mistaken impression that the area in question looks like what's depicted in their film. It does NOT. We've come to expect that the leftist press does that sort of thing in order to place a distorted image of ANWR before those of us in the "lower 48." It's surprising (and disappointing) that Fox would resort to the same, erroneous and misleading image-making. Arguments against drilling in ANWR are mostly based on the assumption that drilling will cause "pollution" that will kill wildlife or spoil the scenery, but there really ISN'T much in the way of "scenery" to be viewed (and almost no people to do the viewing) in the area in question, and drilling in the Prudhoe Bay area certainly hasn't done any harm to the wildlife in the area. In fact, since drilling began there, the Porcupine Caribou herd has increased almost 10-fold. That's not to say that oil production has HELPED the caribou--only that it hasn't harmed them. Dennis Miller has a great line about this issue in one of his stand-up routines. He says, "Do we have so much land and so many States that we're willing to give one of them (Alaska)to a bunch of simu-Bullwinkles?" Another argument against ANWR drilling seems to be the claim that there's not enough oil there to supply America's needs for more than a month or so. That's a silly argument, to be sure. No one has ever suggested that ANWR oil could (or even should) supply all of our energy needs. It's merely seen as a domestic supply that could reduce our dependence for a time on foreign supplies--not supplant them. When I saw those images on the Fox News channel, I was most disappointed. Here's hoping that someone there got the message that the images were misleading and they change their way of doing such stories in the future. ------------ About the author: David A. Jared is a news junkie, semi-retired and an avid golfer who's been writing his first book, "4000 years of chopsticks" for the last 20 years. Email: Pappadave@sbcglobal.net ------------- All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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