Caribou Hoax

Anchorage Times Editorial
November 19, 1999

That 15-foot tall inflatable caribou that environmentalists used at their press conference in front of the nation's Capitol last week wasn't the only bit of trickery being pulled on the public.

The prop looked more like Bullwinkle or a giant elk than it did a caribou. But it was a minor deception compared to what television stations showed about the environmentalists' campaign to lock up the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Video footage that accompanied some of the TV reports showed thousands of caribou running up and over foothills and across a swiftly flowing river, against a background of majestic mountains. In the news clips, the sun shone brightly and the tundra was rich and green. This, viewers were led to believe, was the coastal plain of ANWR. It wasn't.

The area of ANWR used in this film clip was not the flat barren coastal plain. Although we are not certain where the actual filming occurred, it looked like an area immediately to the south of the - coastal plain -- a section of the refuge in the foothills of the nearest mountain range. It's an area that was set aside by Congress 20 years ago as protected wilderness, off limits to oil development.

Clearly not the coastal plain.

And all that lush green tundra, the flowing river and the bright sunshine wasn't a picture of Alaska's North Slope in November.

Had the television newscasts used accurate footage of the coastal plain today, there would have been no giant herd of caribou rollicking about. Instead, viewers would have seen a dark, windy, snow-covered, barren and inhospitable wasteland. The temperature would be well below zero, and the winds would be blowing fiercely.

What message might viewers have taken from such an accurate picture? Well, they might have marveled that the oil industry in Alaska has been able to operate successfully in this environment. Given the opportunity to see an accurate picture of the harsh conditions off Alaska's arctic, viewers surely would be impressed with the accomplishments of the oil industry, which has safely produced oil on the North Slope since the late '70s.

The public can simply ignore the special interest groups, their hot air balloons and other gimmickry. But they have every right to expect the news media to be more objective and accurate.

On this particular story, the news media was neither -- and almost never has been.