Nobel Prize Splits CNN 'Opinion': a MSM Nobel Prize News round up

This is the lead for CNN's webcoverage of Gore's Nobel Prize win:
Al Gore's Nobel prize splits opinion.

That's it.

Al Gore's Nobel prize splits opinion

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and environmental scientists has incensed some CNN.com readers while pleasing others. While Robert Ellis of Ohio says the award is "well-deserved", Matthew Whitley of North Carolina says the peace prize is now a "laughingstock."

At least they know not to bury the lead.

No word in that story on the nature of the climate change threat, its indisputable scientific validity, or why it deserves the prize. Just that the prize itself is 'splitting opinions'.

The Wall Street Journal reportage offers more coverage with a surprisingly positive note:

More broadly, the additional attention Mr. Gore has brought to his cause also will make it harder for other politicians, the Bush administration and skeptics in the business community to avoid the global-warming issue. In his own statement after the prize was announced, he said: "We face a true planetary emergency...The climate crisis is not a political issue ...''"

But it is also running a rather hackneyed poll questioning whether Gore deserves the Nobel Peace Prize here. Not surprising, given the readership, a plurality of its readers don't feel Gore deserved the prize at all. (46% deserves it vs 54% doesn't deserve it) and their Law blog has a piece entitled:Law-School Dropout Wins Nobel Peace Prize to give you a taste of its fair and balanced coverage (it's actually just a puff piece on, well, law school drop outs).

The best front page coverage on the web was probably MSNBC's piece, but even that had a cut out Tom Curry opining that Gore 'would have to learn' from Teddy Roosevelt that winning a Nobel Prize does not a President make.

Nice. Tepid and parsimonious praise to be sure, but I don't suppose we could expect much more from our timid press. No doubt, after we've become accustomed to 120 degree average fall temperatures across the central plain states, the main stream media with accompanying pundit and rightwing blowhards will grudgingly note we--the world--not just the whitebread middle of the xenophobic US -- might be facing something of a problem.

Gore's realization is that we have to unite to solve this problem. That's one reason I suspect he won't enter the fray of a US political contest right now (though I personally wish he would). Far right commentators on the other hand, on the WSJ and elsewhere, are still calling climate change 'junk science' and further, are claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize is 'rigged' and lefty. They are seriously unhinged about the Gore award.  Here are a few advanced notices:

This award is a joke and it encourages the pursuit of junk science for political gain.

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The fear being installed from man made global warming is now officially a communist plot to control behavior.

In the 70s we were out of oil and headed to the dark ages.

Then, AIDS was supposed to kill everyone.

What will they come up with next?

Don't worry Al Gore, real leaders will address the real problems.....problems you helped create as a useless senator and VP.....all so you can fly around in your private jet eating yourself into oblivion.
       
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No. To lump Al Gore with Martin Luther King, Ralph Bunche, and Desmond Tutu is an insult and degrades the award. What the heck does producing a documentary on global warming have to do with world peace? How does this act contribute to bringing people together?

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NO! The Nobel Peace Prize a/k/a The World Is Flat Award. Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
WDFertitta - Annapolis, Md.

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I'm with Scott. Gore is a bloated blowhard who beats the global-warming drum for personal gain. This is very disappointing.

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What a bunch of arrogant morons the Nobel committee must be!
It's one thing for a bunch of light-weight "actors" to drool over this loser politician. But it's quite another for what, used to be, a prestigious honor bestowed on a spouter of junk science in name of saving humanity! Alfred Nobel was a noted scientist and engineer and must be spinning in his grave today to have this prize bearing his name given to a poseur of the first order.

Remember - an iceberg melting in Greenland does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that man is destroying the planet with SUV's. Only ignorance and blind faith in the over-hyped media nonsense that gets you to that conclusion.

One bright spot, given these rabid comments, I don't see how Rupert Murdoch's could conceivably do that much damage to the editorial side of the WSJ. Given where that brain trust already is.

No answer yet to my question on that WSJ thread, either. I asked if Gore doesn't deserve it because he's "too political", what luminary of the right would they have picked to receive the award, instead?

Still waiting on an answer.