With all the talk lately about who's "in the tank" for whom, this is one story where the imagery just might fit. The CEO of Al Gore's big We Campaign is accusing ABC of putting the concerns of big oil over their message of planetary goodwill by refusing to run the latest Al Gore ad, called, "Repower America."
In a scathing email the CEO said:
“Did you notice the ads after last night’s presidential debate? ABC had Chevron. CBS had Exxon. CNN had the coal lobby. But you know what happened last week? ABC refused to run our Repower America ad – the ad that takes on this same oil and coal lobby.”
The We Campaign is striking back with an online petition aimed at getting the ad on the air during Friday's airing of 20/20. The petition has over 80,000 signatures.
To see whether ABC has an agenda, read more.
The ad blasts oil companies as a hurdle to clean energy saying, "Big oil spends hundreds of millions of dollars to block clean energy." The non-airing of the ad seems odd given the network hasn't ignored the climate situation. They have a big budget special called Earth: 2100 planned warning that our civilization is set to go the way of the Mayans if we continue on this path.
On the other hand, in a study by the Business & Media Institute, ABC included more climate change skepticism (36 percent) in its broadcasts than the other networks. Does this combined with the ad's absence dictate a tacit environmental agenda?
Tommy Hilfiger
Del Gatto
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Poor Al, first manbearpig and now big oil.
1Something's missing from the story - what reason did ABC give for turning down the ad?
2hahaha. I loved manbearpig.
3Isn't it amazing that getting green energy into the US is still an uphill battle?
4So...liberal media bias, right?
5Im super serial you guys.
6Im confused- what did ABC say when asked why they pulled the ad?
7It seems ABC has not responded yet. I never watch ABC anyway. Im an NBC girl.
8Roarman -me too!
9ABC's silence doesn't speak well for it - if it was rejected for a valid reason, wouldn't that be easy to say?
10Snaps, Jude!
And yeah, I'm curious about the official reason ABC gave. (I looked, not in the linked article.)
11According to this article, ABC deemed the ad "too controversial" to run after the presidential debate. They said, "All of our advertising is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and the context of this particular ad was determined not to be acceptable per our policy on controversial issue advertising."
12Thanks for that!
Though I probably could have guessed I would not find their reason in any way convincing. It's not controversial at all!
13It's a useless excuse that totally bolsters Gore's case. Big oil can claim that it's helping the environment, Archer Daniels can claim it's food is not really killing us and the planet, but a pitch for clean energy is too controversial.
14Ummm too controversial this add techinically isn't about either canidate so why not? Are they willing to run the Ad at any other time other tan the too controversial post debate time spot? Seriously I think airing people saying Obama's middle name like it's a curse word on T.V. every other night is too controverial too, but ABC does it. Wow thumbs down ABC thumbs Down.
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