Philanthropist Teresa Heinz, wife of defeated Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry (D-Mass), came out swinging on the subject of the news media in her first post-campaign public speech.

Saying Kerry acknowledges "flaws" in his campaign, she insisted that ignoring the environment was not among them.

"The reality is he spoke about it everywhere he went, and so did I. It was a central message of the campaign," she told scientists gathered to honor Stanford University climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D.

The problem, Heinz said, "is a variant of the old tree-in-the-forest riddle," the media didn't cover that aspect of his stump speeches. "The media just wasn't interested in a substantive discussion of the environment. Like that tree, John made the sound, but few people heard it, because no one covered it."

Heinz, decrying "media disinterest and distortion," told the group that "technical issues like climate change lack the fast-paced, breaking-news aspect that journalism feeds on." It's an old argument, she said, with a new twist: "A more insidious factor has come into play: the continuing corporatization of the news."

Heinz quoted journalist-turned-climate activist Ross Gelbspan as warning that "marketing strategy is replacing news judgment." Pointing to news room staffing cutbacks and unwillingness among many editors to cover complex issues, she said real news is being sacrificed for the pursuit of readership and advertising, particularly with media owners sometimes discomfited by coverage of environmental problems.

Heinz recited a litany of concerns about what she called "corporatized news," in particular an unwillingness to offend, the pursuit of short-range profits, and an unwillingness to do investigative journalism. She said such philosophies have a "chilling effect" on reporters.

"That is why, whenever the news media does cover issues like climate change anymore, they do it so badly. That is why they give equal time and weight to the global-warming naysayers, because if they don't, they'll be accused of bias" notwithstanding what she called the "preponderance of real scientists around the globe [who] are in fundamental agreement on climate change."

To Kerry, such an approach "robs the public of critical information about a whole range of difficult issues," undercutting public understanding of environment and threatening democratic principles. She pointed to efforts to restrict teaching of evolution in biology classes as another example that raises concerns.