Category Archives: Pulitzer Prize

Bad idea — Ross Gelbspan popped out of the woodwork with a ‘legacy affirming’ video

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He was probably counting on the Democrats holding their majority in the U.S. House. So, piling on to the basic theme of my November 16 blog post – and now asking on behalf of 220 Republican friends – how’s it going to work out when you have to defend your accusation that the “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” ‘leaked memo’ directive is smoking gun proof that skeptic climate scientists were paid under the table by fossil fuel industry executives, when the fellow who first gained the most fame hurling that accusation in direct connection with that phrase can’t keep his stories straight about his role in the matter?

Again, no exaggeration there about that worthless-as-evidence memo directive phrase (it was never implemented anywhere) being the only thing enviro-activists have in their arsenal to support their accusation about the fossil fuel industry bankrolling disinformation campaigns, and I’m not kidding about the namesake of my GelbspanFiles blog telling one inconsistent story after another when it comes to what prompted him to “expose” the “industry corruption” of skeptic climate scientists. He threw one more of those onto his pile with his September 24 ‘reporter legacy’ Youtube video appearance.

Investigators can’t fully know how faulty the accusation about skeptic scientists sinisterly “repositioning global warming” if they don’t know how faulty the stories about it are from one of the most prominent faces of that accusation. Continue reading →

Pay No Attention to those Words Behind the Curtain

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The title of today’s blog is a paraphrase of the famous quote out of the 1938 film, The Wizard of Oz. Watch the global warming issue zooming by in a superficial manner and all the horrific claims – increasingly extreme weather events, imperiled polar bear populations, skeptics who are paid to lie about the truth of all of this – sound like they are true. But turn any variety of those claims sideways by examining them carefully, and an edge digs in, and it soon becomes apparent that the number of disingenuous situations in the global warming issue is breathtaking. Today, a wipeout from an older version of Ross Gelbspan’s own website that’ll make anyone cringe. Continue reading →

ABC News’ Bill Blakemore: “The only thing I am an activist for is rigorous journalism”

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Former ABC News reporter, I should add. But I’ll get to that small problem later. First, in regard to Ross Gelbspan, it appears Blakemore has a backpedal situation that most people would agree a reporter should never be caught doing, then there is a problem with a particular line in Blakemore’s ABC News bio, and finally there is the larger problem of how the global warming issue seems to owe its life to the sheer lack of rigorous journalism about it. Continue reading →

Pulitzer Label Problem? Journalists Will Fix that For You. Pt II: Bud Ward

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Honestly, when I said in my previous post that one of the founders of Society of Environmental Journalists’ (SEJ) walked back Ross Gelbspan’s “Pulitzer-winner” label at the same time the SEJ itself was calling Gelbspan a “Pulitzer-winner”, I gave SEJ co-founder Bud Ward too much credit. If anything, Ward inadvertently dug a bigger hole for Gelbspan by dancing around the application of the label. Continue reading →

Pulitzer Label Problem? Journalists Will Fix that For You. Pt I

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Not long after the release of Ross Gelbspan’s 1997 “The Heat is On” book, words in its book jacket sleeve about him being a ‘Pulitzer-winning journalist exposing industry efforts to confuse the public about global warming’ drew a response from skeptic climate scientist Dr S. Fred Singer, who categorically denied any quid pro quo arrangement with ‘big coal & oil’, while also directly saying Gelbspan was not a Pulitzer winner. In my June 19, 2013 blog post, I noted Gelbspan’s subsequent odd reliance on wording about being a “co-recipient“, particularly when the Pulitzer label problem resurfaced later in 2004.  But let’s have a look at a 1997 journalist’s effort to prop up Gelbspan’s Pulitzer label. Continue reading →

When is a “Climate Change Expert” not an Expert? (a question Al Gore can use to salvage his legacy)

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Embellishing credentials is an exceptionally bad idea, whether it’s done in self-promotion, or or done deliberately to hoodwink the public, or done mistakenly because someone didn’t do elemental fact-checking. Yet in the global warming issue, we see instances where a major organization promoted the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a Nobel laureate when he is not, and another organization similarly promoting a prominent IPCC scientist as a Nobel laureate when he is not, and the long-term promotion of book author Ross Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner when he is not, a problem first revealed long ago by Steve Milloy and expanded upon at this blog. But now, let’s examine Gelbspan’s other small problem, the “Climate Change Expert” label. Continue reading →

When is a “Pulitzer Winner” not a Pulitzer Winner?

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The March 26, 2006 ABC News quote I put in the main blog banner illustration above is a case study on how the news media repeats the basic accusation against skeptic climate scientists, and steers us to what is supposed to be devastating reporting by an unimpeachable source:

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan blames a 15-year misinformation campaign by the oil and coal industries. […] To redefine global warming as theory — not fact — the industry funded research by “friendly” scientists…”

Perish the thought of the news media actually giving skeptics a fair shot at defending their science assessments, such as the way the PBS NewsHour has demonstrably excluded them from its program for 17+ years. Otherwise viewers might perceive a significant flaw with the “misinformation” accusation. But since we are talking about journalists who must aspire to do reporting worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, we have to wonder how they let Gelbspan’s “Pulitzer winner” label go unquestioned. Surely, if an ex-editor/reporter gains fame as a Pulitzer winner, we have a giant problem if he never won a Pulitzer, don’t we? Continue reading →