THE NEWSTWISTERS

And the brainwashing continues. CBS' 60 minutes is becoming such a source of energy disinformation, it is beginning to rival the newstwisters at PBS (who are largely funded by Mobil's masochism and Exxon's exxuberance). On Nov. 25, 60 Minutes brought a piece on power plant construction in Illinois studded with Reasoner's customary falsehoods. Many American utilities live boldly by the principle "Don't make waves," but Illinois Power hit back. They made a video-tape of the original piece in which Reasoner is interrupted and corrected by an IPC spokesman every time Reasoner engages in newscasting of the CBS variety. A transcript of the resulting show is available free to AtE subscribers from H.L. Deakins, Pubi. Affairs, Illinois Power Co., 500 S.27^th Street, Decatur, IL 62525.

Where do upright journalists like Reasoner, Wicker or Brokaw get their stories? Presumably from such upright information agencies as SIPI and CIEI. The "Scientists' Institute for Public Information" was founded by non-scientists like Gus Speth and ex-scientists like Barry Commoner; it is generously funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. So successful were they in feeding 84 journalists their kind of information in the week of the TMI episode that they decided to expand their "Media Resource Service;" a single fund-raising reception on Dec. 5 netted these poor underdogs $94,000.

The "Center for International Environment Information" was established by the United Nations Association of the USA with the active support of the United Nations Environment Program, but don't mistake them for another sidekick of the ambassador of the People's Republic of Neanderthal: They are a center for the subtle dissemination of crude disinformation. They ask honest and widely respected scientists whether they are willing to be quoted as experts for contact by the news media on a certain subject, such as nuclear safety. Of course they are. By the time the boys from CIEI have printed a Guide to Energy Specialists and distributed 2,000 free copies to the news media, the honest scientists find themselves imbedded in lists of such "experts" as Geesaman, Komanoff, Lovins, Caldicott, Cochran, Resnikoff (Sierra Club), Lash (NRDC), Pollock (Critical Mass), and plenty of others of their ilk. When the scientists realize they have been duped, they quietly (why quietly?) resign from such company, but the damage has been done and is continuing: Their names continue to give respectability to the lists and to the CEIE's fund raising gimmicks to distribute yet more free copies to the media.

And finally something about the integrity of the ever antinuclear Newsweek. When the Ayatollah's goons released their female and black hostages, one black reportedly refused to leave his fellow Americans to become a propaganda pawn. Was the report true? We don't know, and neither does Newspeak, for he is still a blindfolded prisoner. And not knowing, they saw fit to describe this possible hero as "outspoken and more than a little abrasive. He probably shot his mouth off..."