The Australian Broadcasting Company's "Media Watch" has blown apart the story which made big news, including a New York Times front page picture on February 3, about polar bears being stranded on glacial ice which had broken off, and which liberal alarmists then attributed to their current-favorite world-ending disaster, global warming.The Media Watch video report giving the truth about the photo can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/watch/default.htm?program=mediawatch&pres=20070402_2120&story=3 NewsBusters also has covered this story for some time, with a long piece on March 20th about the picture being mislabeled and misattributed. The young woman who took the photo was none too pleased about its distribution and misuse. They also ran a piece on April 6th about the Media Watch broadcast. The comments following the article are worth a read. What I find more amazing than the fact that this is a hoax (in the sense that the photo was taken in August, the bears are not in danger, and this in no way has any relevance to "global warming") is that it has taken so long for the issue to get into the broader media. The New York Times, one of the many high-profile willing victims here, published a "correction" on March 3rd, a month after the photo appeared on their front page, and two months before Media Watch covered it. As I write this, I am wondering to myself...what are the chances that the Times published the correction on Saturday, the day which I assume is the paper is least widely read. So I just checked what day of the week March 3rd was, and indeed it was a Saturday. I don't know whether to laugh or scream. I suppose I'm not amazed that it took so long, given the mainstream media's position on "global warming", for the "correction" (for the wider use of the photo, not just the NY Times) to become more widely known. They have drunk the kool aid; they love an issue which is anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-developed world, and pro-Al Gore. I just hope more of these outrageous abuses of the public trust are uncovered so that the NY Times and other major liberal media outlets become even less credible on the issue of climate change than they already are. In the meantime, thanks to a commenter on NewsBusters named "Dontab" who gave us this bit of perfection: