Gore bans press from campus environmental talks

My old hometown newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, has an article saying that Al Gore (pictured) is planning a talk on the campus of Augustana College.

The talk will be called, “Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21st Century."

Reporters and TV news cameras will be banned from almost all of former Vice President Al Gore's appearance Jan. 23 in Sioux Falls.

Has it come to that? Does he need to go to what he considers a hick state to preach his junk science with the press banned?

Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a press conference.

By banning the press and refusing a press conference, Gore almost guarantees that the talk will be smuggled out and plastered all over the Internet via YouTube.

Secrecy is nothing new to Al Gore.

Soon after his failed presidential campaign in 2000, he became a part-time journalism teacher at Columbia University where he placed his students under a gag order. After a short time, however, Columbia forced Gore to lift the gag order.

The Argus Leader story is here. The story of the gag order imposed on his students in 2001 is here.