LA Weekly

Just as the news comes over the transom that Fox News paid $14,000 for its exclusive (whoo-hoo!) interview with Tom DeLay:

Paul Thacker of Environmental Science and Technology has a column up on The New Republic today holding FoxNews.com to account for the strange persistence of former tobacco shill turned ExxonMobil geisha Steven Milloy among its columnists. As Chris Mooney revealed in Mother Jones last year, professional climate-change debunker and Cato "scholar" Milloy:

runs two organizations that receive money from ExxonMobil. Between 2000 and 2003, the company gave $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center, which is registered to Milloy’s home address in Potomac, Maryland, according to IRS documents. ExxonMobil gave another $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute—also registered to Milloy’s residence.

Back then, "a Fox News spokesman 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.'"

Interesting distinction, especially when those nonprofits are run out of his house.

Now comes Thacker, in both his TNR story and a blog entry at The Huffington Post, to show that Milloy's connection to big tobacco was more direct. "[A] January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001," he writes. During that time, Milloy wrote copious text ridiculing studies proving the dangers of secondhand smoke.

It's reminiscent of other journalistic shills, such as Business Week Online's Michael Fumento ($60,000 for Monsanto to defend genetically engineered crops) and Chicago Tribune columnist Armstrong Williams (fired for taking $250,000 from the Bush admninistration to promote "No Child Left Behind"):

But whereas Scripps Howard fired Fumento and apologized to its readers, Fox News continues to look the other way as Milloy accepts corporate handouts. And it's not just the ExxonMobil money. Milloy has a long history of taking payment from industries that have a stake in the science stories he writes.

So what'll it be, Fox? Propaganda to flatter corporate America or fair and balanced journalism?

Wacky and predictable in that libertarian way (pro-DDT, anti-clean air), Milloy is fond of slamming Al Gore for his lucrative speaking engagements, somehow insinuating that the money blinds him to the reality that humans are not causing the climate to change (that's the new spin from the Reason-mag set -- you can't deny global warming, but you can still lift the blame off humans). But how does that compare with grinding your well-heeled boots into a position, against overwhelming scientific consensus, that serves the company that pays your mortgage?

Milloy never responds to requests for interviews. But it would sure be interesting to hear what logic he crafts to defend himself. I love it when nutty libertarians construct their proofs. It brings me right back to my high school debate team.

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