At the start of my previous Climategate posting, I suggested that James Delingpole might be slacking off on the subject. Maybe he is. There is still nothing up at his blog beyond his afore-linked Beano bit. Maybe he feels he needs a breather. But maybe he is working very hard on another Climategate story, of which there are now dozens to chase up. Talk about a target rich environment for journalists.
Not that you would know it in the USA, if blog complaints like this are anything to go by. The way that the USA’s old media are mostly ignoring the biggest scientific fraud in history, and one of the biggest global stories of the century so far, is itself an amazing story. Delingpole has written an entire book on recent US politics, and surely has many acquaintances in the US old media. Maybe he is now grilling these people, and will soon be doing a piece on why these persons are covering themselves in such unglory, Climategate-wise. Someone should.
Although, maybe I’m out of date and the US old media are getting their Climategate act together at last. Or maybe the Americans I’ve been reading are wrong, and the US old media have always been noticing Climategate, just not in the way those Americans would like. Comments from US readers about those possibilities would be most welcome. The Washington Post seems to be noticing. Weren’t they the guys who lead the way on that original gate thing?
ADDENDUM: In the course of shortening this post, cutting out some digressions, I omitted one crucial non-digression which I now take the liberty of adding.
If it’s true that right wing bloggers and right wing Brit newspapers are now savaging the Warmists completely wrongly, well, isn’t that a story in its own right, given the huge scale of this phenomenon? Aren’t these bad bloggers and cynical Brit journos threatening the very future of the planet? And you guys are ignoring that? Why aren’t you grilling these bad, bad people? Why no big exposures of the wrongness and wickedness of Steve McIntyre? Why no stuff saying “What’s up with Watt’s Up With That??” One way or another, this is a huge story.
Trouble is, I guess they want the story to go one way, but that if they investigate it properly they fear that they’ll find it going the other way.
ANOTHER ADDENDUM: Bishop Hill:
Steve Mosher, the man who broke the CRU emails story and author of Climategate: The CRUtape Letters, is interviewed on PJTV. Some interesting thoughts on what it means and why the US press has largely ignored it.
Which would at least further suggest that they have ignored it.
Your impression is correct.
The supposition is that we are seeing the emotional (and political) investment of journalists. There’s a culture war aspect to it here in the States that may explain why the natural instinct for the Big Story isn’t enough.
See this: NYT Still MIA
Semiseriously asked: has anyone yet created a press release about Climategate and distributed it to American papers? Maybe the problem isn’t bias so much as a lack of free copy to parrot.
Well, I did say “semiseriously.”
The Old Media gatekeepers in the US are still the most zealous defenders of the faith and won’t be swayed from their Hot Earth theories until they’re dragged kicking and screaming from their inky lairs and cast into the snow drifts.
They don’t want the story to go one way, they want it to go a way.
I know “freedom of the press” blah blah.
There really needs to be a tort called “media malpractice”.
Establish that the MSM has a fiduciary duty to the public and the bounds of that duty.
After all the press is always going on about how “the public has a RIGHT to know”, don’t they?
Point is — it really does not matter that the legacy media in the US are not covering the implosion of the Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming scam. No one signficant pays any attention to the NYT and CNN and all the rest of them any more. Except for the Beautiful People in the In-Crowd, who would be too dumb to understand the story even if the NYT did print it.
The failure of the media to cover the story says a lot more about the media than about the story. The failure of anyone in the US to care that the old media are not covering Climategate says even more.
Of course, it would be fascinating to see a story about the climate hoax on ABC News — but only in the same sense that we all might like to read the article on the same topic in the Economist.
I live in Chicago and the local Alphabet TV media has been completly silent.
A first here when the Chicago Tribune today had a piece, which hinted at a problem with the IPCC, but then quickley followed with the same ole “minor error, the science is still sound”.
I left a comment on their website….
“Wow… the Tribune cracks open the AGW door, takes a tiny peek, sees the green slime oozing from between the crack, then quickly slams the door.”
You’ve been slimed… but that’s about it.
Interesting how the reading public is immensely more knowledgeable of the subject than the “journalist” who is paid to report it to us. ALL, 100% of the comments were negative to the piece. It’s unbelievable how horrendous the coverage is here.
Ah, the journalists are probably shying away from the story because they’d actually have to do some work. Rather than copy a press-release from WWF, Greenpeace or the IPCC before heading off for a liquid lunch they might actually, shock horror probe, do some research and fire-up that cobwebby organ between their ears.
Brian there is a snowstorm in the English Midlands and I am cut off from sat television.
So I have been listening to “mainstream media” radio and watching “mainstream media” television.
On the radio discussion of African dictators included stuff about Barack Obama – how wonderful he was, how he could lead the people of African nations away from dictatorship.
Of couse a main theme of the real (as opposed to the divine) Barack Obama is his attack on Bush for being too interested in democracy – how the United States should be more realistic and work with governments that Bush regarded as beyond the pale, but this was the opposite of what was broadcast on msm radio.
On television “neocons” (in reality moderate types) were described (on something called the “Culture Show”) as ultra capitalists who wanted “phycopaths” (in the sense of mad and evil people) to run industry – thus leading to mass proverty and …..
And on and on.
The British msm seems to be one long screech of leftist agitation and propaganda.
Just like the American msm in fact.
If you think that the likes of NBC and CBS news are going to “expose the greatest scientific fraud in history” or anything else that might harm the leftist agenda (this agenda being to maximise the power of the collective) then you are deluding yourself. Ditto the “mainstream” newspapers (i.e. those who follow the lead of the New York Times).
The msm (whether British or American) is MOSTLY evil and depraved (they are not, in the main, people who are making an honest intellectual error – their fault is a moral one) – we can not work with them.
We can only work around them – by trying to get the truth to the people by other means.
I apologize for the traces of bad temper in the above – it is just that many good people have wasted a lot of their lives trying to “work within the system”. It does not work – and it does not work because there is no argument or evidence that can be produced (whether on climate change or anything else) that would really influence most of the people in the msm. Or the “education system” that produces the people of the msm.
I repeat their failing is not an intellectual one (that we can help with – by producing arguments and evidence) it is a moral one.
That is why the very things that you mention (such as PJTV) are so important.
Although they can not win on their own.
For example, for all the faults of News International (which are many), without Fox News in the United States what little hope there is would fade.
The internet has to work with other media in order to be truly effective.
A story starts on the internet – but then (to get to very large numbers of people) has to go out to television and talk radio, and have books written about it (books that actually appear) and these books must be promoted.
It’s not the biases of the various media formats that bother me. I can spot a bias, one way or the other, from a mile away.
The real problems are cowardice, sensationalism, triviality, and ignorance.
These media types are afraid to buck the approved narrative, afraid to admit they may have been fooled by their own scientific ignorance, afraid to admit that the sensational warnings of drowning cities and mass extinctions were the factors that made the climate story interesting, not any true appreciation of the alleged science being promoted.
I grew up with a few TV channels and a few pop radio channels. There were still newsreels shown at the double feature movies I went to as a kid on Saturday afternoon.
Now, the information outlets are multiplying, and the increase is exponential and accelerating. All around the world, even the most ruthless dictatorships are terrified that their populace might have access to the global information networks.
The traditional media are dodos—flightless, defenseless, awkward, waddling birds who find themselves surrounded by salivating predators.
One after another, they face declining subscriptions or viewers, declining revenues, and bankruptcy, both financial and moral.
The practitioners of the legacy media are like the artisans who worked for years in the same buggy factory as their fathers and grandfathers, only to hear the telltale sounds of the automobiles, which would soon eliminate the need for all that they knew how to make, grow louder and louder in the streets outside.
The traditional political party model will soon follow, although that will be a considerably more messy and dangerous transition. (That’s the real meaning of the Tea Party movement, by the way, and the reason for the utterly virulent and hate-filled response from traditional pols—they can sense the threat, even if they can’t gasp the scope of it as yet.)
The autocrats continue to attempt to amass power in the traditional manner, even as the information that truly is power flows out across the world’s peoples like a river in unprecedented flood stage.
We are observing the final death throes of the principle that the “party” knows all, and controls all, however that party is organized and defined.
This is not a passive, spectator sport, however.
Constant pressure, and a consistent articulation of the arguments against the inverted morality and corruption of the overarching state, are indispensible to its inevitable demise.
The sun will never rise on a perfect world, nor set on an earth without a seemingly endless supply of threats and problems. To long for some other reality is to long for something other than human existence, some utopia as delusional as the collectivists and their faithful congregations keep promising.
The challenges that gave rise to the evolution of true humans were ferocious and deadly, demanding every ounce of courage, innovation, and clear thinking our ancestors could summon.
And so it is today, and will be tomorrow.
Teach your children well…