National Science Teachers Association

The original kurfluffle over the donation of "An Inconvenient Truth" DVDs to the National Teachers Association was prompted by an article in The Washington Post by Laurie David, one of the show's producers. Several bloggers were highly critical of NSTA, based on the "facts" in the newspaper article.

NSTA has now posted a press release on the NSTA Website.

Over the past few days, NSTA and film producer Laurie David have been discussing her offer to provide NSTA with copies of the DVD "An Inconvenient Truth" to mass distribute to our members. On November 29, 2006, NSTA's Board of Directors held a telephone conference to review Ms. David's request. In an effort to accommodate her request without violating the Board's 2001 policy prohibiting product endorsement, and to provide science educators with the opportunity to take advantage of the educational opportunities presented by films such as this, NSTA has offered to greatly expand the scope of the potential target audience identified in her initial request.

NSTA established its non-endorsement policy to formalize our position that the association would not send third-party materials to our members without their consent or request. NSTA looks forward to working with Ms. David to ensure that there are many options for publicizing the availability of the DVD to the national science education community, and to broaden the conversation on the important topic of global warming.

There appears to be more to this story than we originally thought. Several bloggers have commented [BadAstronomy, No Se Nada, A Blog Around the Clock, Discovering Biology in a Digital World].