NSTA, Exxon and An Inconvenient Truth: Update
On November 27th, I wrote about Laurie David’s Washington Post op-ed piece on the National Science Teachers Association’s refusal to distribute 50,000 copies of An Inconvenient Truth to its high school science teaching members.
Since then, I have followed the ensuing shit-storm with interest as it played out on Laurie David’s Huffington Post blog and on the NSTA’s website.
Being a former journalist, I decided to get in touch with the NSTA myself and ask a few questions. Specifically I was interested in knowing how they had arrived at the 2001 anti-endorsement policy that they give as the primary reason for not distributing the DVDs.
When the NSTA sent me this flimsy document I left them a phone message requesting more details.
The man at the centre of the controversy, Dr. Gerry Wheeler himself, called me back to talk about it.
The NSTA’s Executive Director told me that the his agency doesn’t keep detailed minutes from board meetings, but that he had been the board member to make the recommendation to terminate NSTA endorsements and that to the best of his memory:
At that time [the NSTA] had about 5 or six products or services that we had endorsed […] and what I was recommending was that we didn’t have the expertise or resources on-staff to go and look at all these things and that we’d be better off to just take the high-road and have a policy not to endorse anything.
Fair enough. But the producers of An Inconvenient Truth weren’t asking for an endorsement were they? Dr. Wheeler:
If you’re a member and I send you [the DVD] without you asking, my interpretation of that is it’s an endorsement. […] My guess is that [Laurie David] wanted to say, “NSTA thought this was so important, they sent it to all their members.”
Dr. Wheeler talked about NSTA’s offer to put up a link on the NSTA website and have science teachers request copies directly. He didn’t think Laurie David wanted to go for that because:
She didn’t want to give away all those DVDs. She just wanted a finite number to be given out by the NSTA. […] She’s a multimillionaire who doesn’t like to hear the word no and it’s really done a hell of a lot of damage.
And what does he feel about global warming?
Endorsing or not endorsing a movie about global warming by Al Gore is not the same as saying global warming is important or not important. […] Global warming is important and CO2 buildup is true.
Good to know where he stands on all of this, but Dr. Wheeler’s organisation does continue to receive millions of dollars from the oil industry, and despite his insistence that this is “no strings attached” money, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Still, I gotta give the guy props for calling me back to talk about it.
Next up on the hotseat: Laurie David. We’ll see if she returns my calls…
Have a great weekend!
December 18th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Woah. It’s not so easy to hate this Wheeler guy as it was before i heard him speak. He has a point about endorsement, and I’m really shocked to hear about his offer to make the DVD’s available on the website. Interesting that Laurie didn’t bring that up.
I’m curious about the ‘hell of a lot of damage’ that Laurie David caused though. I wonder what he’d say about his Exxon pals.
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