"Honest Al" Gore visits Mexico, bars media from his speech, refuses to be interviewed

Narco News: Al Gore Stirs Controversy, this Time In Mexico

The press was barred from Gore’s speech, reportedly about climate change, and state officials refused to state how much the former US presidential candidate was paid (Gore typically receives $170,000 dollars per speech). The mystery was further fueled by vague admissions that private sector donors had financed Gore’s visit, but state officials claimed they did not know who paid the speaker’s fees and costs.

Sponsored by the state’s “Commitment to Mexico” initiative as part of a two-day conference on climate change and sustainable development, the website for the forum states that “all of the forums will be transmitted live” on Mexican state television, radio, and over the Internet. All other parts of the forums were in fact broadcast live, but not Gore’s speech.

This, only two months after Gore lambasted similar behavior from the oil company BP for barring reporters from parts of the Gulf of Mexico damaged by its massive oil rig leak. Gore told the Christian Science Monitor that BP’s actions were “completely unacceptable,” and that “this de facto form of censorship needs to stop.”
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While the forums weren’t open to the public, they were open to credentialed press. But on Wednesday morning reporters covering the panels were surprised to find out that the venue for Gore’s speech would not only be closed to the media, but that they would only be able to listen to the first five minutes of the American politician’s speech from a closed-circuit TV. Journalists at the conference were given a press advisory stating in Spanish that “there would be no transmission of the lecture for any media after the first five minutes,” per the request of Gore’s representatives. The memo also stated that Gore’s media team had requested there be no “interviews or press conferences with Mr. Gore.”