The Late Jim Lehrer, and the Lost Opportunity … or not just yet.

Long-time PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer died this past Thursday, lauded far and wide as substantive reporter who always had ‘a sober approach to the news.’ Many repeated parts of his famous nine tenets of old-school journalism. Fox News stated his 9th one, “I am not in the entertainment business” and NBC News led with Lehrer’s adage about the perils of news reporters committing the sin of believing in their own superficial publicity: “it’s not about us.” As a long-time viewer of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from some time in the late 1970s all the way up to Jim Lehrer’s retirement as its anchor, I get the impression he was very sincere about that last advice to his colleagues. While he’d humbly appreciate the many kind words about him now, he’d quite likely also suggest that an old-school tough reporter-style examination of his career wouldn’t be out of order, either. I wish an objective reporter could have approached him directly regarding my own personal brief interaction with him years ago, but that’s a lost opportunity now. It isn’t lost overall yet, however, when it comes to news reporting by others about the collective global warming story.

Back in 2011, I sent an 1100-word snail mail (full text here) directly to Jim Lehrer, first praising him for his advocacy of fair and balanced reporting over his long career, and then inquiring about the NewsHour’s appearance of egregiously biased reporting of the global warming issue. I received a two sentence reply, a cherished letter which also contains something that prompts a perplexing question:

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(4/19/19 small update) A short blogging break

For loyal readers following along here, and for new arrivals: a medical situation with a family member is interrupting my blogging right at the present time. Those of you who’ve had relatives or friends that must be placed in assisted living homes know how cumbersome these changes can be. I see an end in sight, probably around the first week of May. Rest assured, I’ll be right back here where I left off, in my dissections of the smear of skeptic climate scientists.

4/19/19 small update: A brief window of available time allows me to put out a post here.

4/11/19 small update: Had to revise the tally of the NewsHour global warming reporting bias once again.

4/8/19 small update: From receiving an alert on this Reuters article about a European global warming lawsuit action filed by Greenpeace, it looks like one of my tasks will be to see if the lawsuit isn’t enslaved to the same worthless ‘leaked memo evidence’ that the U.S. global warming lawsuits are.

Why am I Here?

Stepping outside of my usual blog posts to offer a bit of history which some of my readers may not know much about. It was ten years ago today that my first-ever online article appeared, and it had nothing to do with the false accusation about ‘Big Coal & Oil’ paying skeptic climate scientists to spread lies undercutting Al Gore’s ‘settled global warming science.’ Continue reading

Truth Tellers vs Arctic-area Refrigerator Salesmen

While today’s blog post – which also serves as an entry into a writing contest titled “You are Enough” – is not my usual focus on particular details which implode the notion that the fossil fuel industry ‘pays skeptic climate scientists inject misleading lies into the settled science certainty of man-caused catastrophic global warming,’ it will nevertheless illustrate one of the core problems with that particular political angle of the issue. Specifically, writers who believe in themselves and their ability to write effectively enough… or the lack thereof … to successfully promulgate Al Gore’s side of the issue. Continue reading

Small Update

Loyal readers here might have noticed some drop-off of material here in the last couple of months, as I’ve otherwise tried to put in 3 or 4 blog posts per month over the last year. That stems largely from a hobby pursuit of my which ate up a good chunk of April, and I’ve been having some fun just recently outside of my standard examination of the history of the smear of skeptics. Please see “Climate Change Free Speech Prohibited at DailyKos“,  “Merchants of Doubt: A Climate Change Dud”, and my additional review of Oreskes’ film at the Internet Movie Database site. Plus, some amount of my time goes toward dropping into hard-core global warming believers’ sites, ultimately to live rent-free in those bloggers (plural, I should note) / commenters’ minds. So much to do, so little time to get everything done.

Rest assured, my dissection of the events and people involved in the smear of skeptics goes on. Stay tuned, my long-held educated guess that Ross Gelbspan did no ‘investigative journalism’ research into his claims that Western Fuels was out to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” is now something I can say (via interview results conducted by a renowned politics researcher), with absolute certainty. The most basic of interviewing of key people surrounding the leaked memo page containing that infamous phrase would have told Gelbspan it was never part of the public relations campaign he claims it was.

Global warming believers across the board trust that the ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ accusation has evidence to back it up, trusting in the notion that their leaders speak with authority about it being exposed by a ‘Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.’ I’ve already shown the backpedaling surrounding Ross Gelbspan’s ‘Pulitzer winner’ label. I just wonder now what kind of spin will be applied to his ‘investigative journalist’ label.

Personal item update

Back in mid-August, I was thinking I could get in at least two if not three more blog posts here. But, a family matter interrupted that, and some residual distractions resulting from it may briefly slow me down occasionally. For those who check into this blog periodically to see what’s new, rest assured, I most certainly have not run out of material. For any pro-global warming people who might happen to be following this blog, rest assured, the audio/visual analogy of my work that I offered in my January 28 post will not be something you can purge from your minds anytime soon.

How to (not exactly) Speak at ICCC9

For those of you who are first-time readers of my blog here as a result of somehow seeing my presentation at the ICCC9 Climate Change Conference, either in person, or by viewing the video* (*see below for different YouTube link), or simply meeting me there, welcome! I’m glad you are here. As anyone can see just a short time into my talk, I’m not a trained speaker. However……. Continue reading