An authoritative portrayal like that simply begs for the question, “when is ‘journalism’ nothing more than environmental issue propagandizing?” Continue reading
Category Archives: mainstream media reporting
When you display no intellectual curiosity about glitches in the items you report about …..
…. you end up mindlessly regurgitating propaganda talking points about long-dead false news items while claiming it is “original reporting + analysis on the climate crisis.”
And, I should add, astute observers could use that wipeout to illustrate what is entirely wrong with the notion of ‘industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns,’ where the ultimate result is that it appears to be the enviro-activists who’ve been spoon-feeding disinformation on the global warming issue to gullible ‘reporters’ and others who also never questioned it for them to regurgitate at a later date. Continue reading
Status Update: my complaint to BBC, re Radio 4’s “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Ep. 6: ‘Reposition Global Warming’
Within my “Part 1” July 31, 2020 blog post / Aug 1 2020 WUWT guest post — just short of one year ago — I noted how I had made a formal complaint to the BBC about four egregious errors within Radio 4’s Episode 6 podcast report, where my complaint challenged the report’s insinuations that a pair of ‘leaked industry memo sets’ proved the fossil fuel industry deceived the public about the harm of global warming. It took two months for the BBC to at least partially admit that the guest featured within the podcast, ex-Greenpeace staffer / ex-Ozone Action staffer (the group that first gave the “reposition global warming” memo set its first major media traction in the late 1990s) Kert Davies, had inserted a racially-charged label into one of the supposedly ‘leaked memo sets’ that is demonstratively not anywhere in the set. I detailed that angle in my “Part 3” October 6, 2020 blog post, and further noted within it that my three other complaint points had not been addressed by the BBC at all, and I also directly alerted the BBC about that problem.
The BBC is a giant bureaucratic operation, it takes a while for complaints to get to the proper people. In October and November 2020, I received auto-replies from the BBC saying they would consider my other complaint points when they had time. Having not heard a word after that all the way up to May 22nd this year, I again reminded them at that time how my complaints remain largely unaddressed. I got yet another “we are currently dealing with a higher than normal volume of cases” auto-reply June 1st ………… and then received what your see verbatim below on July 7th, in the italicized, indented paragraphs. Continue reading
Oops (sorta): CORRECTION clarification regarding the “Victory will be achieved” memo set
As I implied at this blog way back in 2013, I will never bury any of my errors or pretend they never happened. (Not so for the New York Times lately, but that’s a whole other matter)
In light of a particular revelation out of the very recent interview I conducted with former American Petroleum Institute VP / COO William O’Keefe, I need to basically correct what I’ve long said about the 1998 “victory will be achieved” memo set being unsolicited by API. Continue reading
“… and the Dan Rather Medal for News and Guts Award goes to …”
Dan Rather, for those who aren’t familiar with him, is a veteran U.S. TV news anchor who had a fairly good career right up to the point where he apparently overlooked the importance of checking the veracity of clearly fabricated documents when he reported how they appeared to undercut the integrity of 2004 U.S. presidential re-election candidate George W. Bush. It’s a Rather Shameful tale of self-inflicted tragedy where he appears to have never accepted the reality of his journalism blunder. Making matters far worse, Dan Rather later essentially said President Bush would be proven guilty when evidence is found to support that. So, either the concept of innocence before being proven guilty is out the window, or the basic tenets of bulletproof journalism is out the window. Neither situation looks good for his legacy.
When I first heard the announcement of the new “Dan Rather Medals for News and Guts Award,” I guessed it was simply Babylon Bee-style headline satire, a dry humor jab at how badly mainstream media reporting has devolved lately. This sort of satire is easy to make up: The Gina McCarthy Prize for Preserving Natural Beauty, the BP Most Effective Construction Cost Savings award, the Mike Bloomberg Savvy Spending Trophy. Continue reading
“The Capitol Riot and Climate Disinformation” — John Schwartz, New York Times
“They’re more closely related than you might think” is Schwartz’s subhead for his January 13, 2021 New York Times article. The subtle implication is that if any person doesn’t accept the settled science of the 2020 U.S. presidential election or the settled science of catastrophic man-caused global warming, that person should be vilified and shunned from society.
Obey, accept news media narratives without question about ‘global warming science,’ or else, and obey mandates to, shall we say, not speak of preventing the theft of the 2020 election, lest it incite more violence ….. or else. OR ELSE! But when Schwartz chose “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary movie star Naomi Oreskes as his go-to source for the history of disinformation efforts in his article, he inadvertently amplified how the actual threat to the well-being of the country is not some right-wing conspiracy to subvert democracy and protect corporate profits, it’s disinformation from the mainstream media itself.
“We found no evidence of bias in our news outlet,” declares biased news outlet
While this looks like a headline befitting publication at the satirical website The Babylon Bee in its collection that already contains gems like “Quick Google Search Confirms Google Not Rigged,” it is the actual real-world conclusion coming from promoters of the PBS NewsHour, a news outlet that has never once over the last 20+ years permitted a PhD-level climatologist / atmospheric physicist to appear on its news program to debate the global warming issue with comparable scientists endorsing the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Continue reading
BBC ( sort of … ) Corrects Radio 4’s “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Episode 6: ‘Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact’
And in doing so, they inadvertently dug a deeper hole for themselves. Continue reading
BBC Radio 4 vs Rush Limbaugh, Pt 2: “I don’t remember this stupid ad.”
In my July 31, 2020 Part 1 blog post (handily reproduced as a guest post at WattsUpWithThat the following day), I detailed how a BBC Radio4 podcast’s claims about the fossil fuel industry engaging in disinformation campaigns to undercut concern over man-caused global warming is based on spurious references to what turns out to be leaked industry memo strategies that were never actually implemented. I also noted how the podcast incorrectly implicated conservative U.S. talk show host Rush Limbaugh in their accusation, and illustrated how the podcast guest providing the memos very strangely worsened the overall situation by needlessly adding an arguably racially charged word into his quote of one of the unused memo phrases that was not actually in the memo.
Rush Limbaugh somehow learned of that BBC online podcast and its scheduled August 3 on-air radio broadcast, and spoke directly about it to his 15 million+ listeners during his own August 3 live broadcast radio show. The verbatim transcript for that segment (with a link at the bottom to my WUWT guest post version of my Part 1 blog post) is here. Below are excerpts from the segment, where I highlight the key items in red: Continue reading