How about this for spectacular arrogance.  CSICOP say: UFO's don't exist, so we want then removed from the media!  What a load of  ^*%$£"

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Subject: Sceptics try to influence US TV

 

CSICOP is pleased to announce that it has purchased additional shares of

Viacom "A" class or voting class stock as part of it's Council For Media

Integrity Stock Fund. Viacom is the parent company of the CBS Network.

In its latest effort in the battle against fringe-science TV, the Committee

for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and

it's "media watch-dog" arm, the Council for Media Integrity (CMI),

established the "Media Stock Fund." Aimed at providing leverage for CSICOP's

response to the television industries lucrative commercial marketing of

fringe science and psuedoscience, CMI is asking friends and supporters to

help it aquire common stock in media conglomerate companies. The Media Stock

Fund will allow CSICOP and the CMI to take part in shareholder meetings,

where it can question the increasing infatuation with the paranormal in

television programming.

"We are deliberately targeting each of the major television networks and

well-known media conglomerates - Viacom (CBS), General Electric (NBC),

NewsCorp (Fox), AOL/Time Warner (WB, Turner Broadcasting, CNN), and Disney

(ABC)," says Paul Kurtz, chairman of CSICOP. "The media have now virtually

replaced the schools, colleges, and universities as the main source of

information for the general public. The irresponsability of the media in the

area of science and the paranormal is a world wide problem. But it

especially applies to the United States, where the media have been

distorting science and, in particular, presenting psuedoscience as genuine

science. Indeed, we are appalled by the number of 'documentaries,' which are

really entertainment programs, presenting fringe science as real science."

The practice of organizing shareholder response within a company is common

among advocacy groups that seek socially responsable corporate conduct

through shareholder-passed resolutions. As a share-holder, CSICOP and the

CMI will have opportunities to attend shareholder meetings, submit

viewpoints to shareholder publications, and sponsor shareholder resolutions.

While exercising these and other rights, CSICOP will be representing a

broad, international constituency who support the critical investigation of

the paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific

viewpoint to the public at large. "In the future we hope the fund will allow

us to make shareholder meetings into accountablility sessions for the media

giants when they package superstition and psuedoscience as fact," Kurtz

said.

"We realize that the media are being attacked from all sides, but we think

that a plea for raising the level of understanding of science should be

heard."

See our website at: http://www.csicop.org/cmi/stock.html