An authoritative portrayal like that simply begs for the question, “when is ‘journalism’ nothing more than environmental issue propagandizing?” Continue reading
Category Archives: When is “X” Not Actually “X”?
The Big Ben Santer Problem, Pt 3: When is an “Attack” Not Actually an Attack?
When a person claims to have been innocently speaking on a specific topic, only to be horrified by sudden, personal, vicious attacks over it, to the point of becoming sick, then learns soon afterward how this isn’t a unique situation but is instead part of a larger orchestrated plot run by sinister forces to attack other scientists the same way, the person takes on a heroic status by exposing the organizations and actors behind the attacks.
What happens when there were no personal attacks in the supposedly comparable situation, though, and most of what this person says about the tangential details of the comparison is strangely inconsistent? Continue reading
When is a “Climate Change Expert” not an Expert? (a question Al Gore can use to salvage his legacy)
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?
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