The sound of censored science;
Unlike their coverage of the political establishment or the corporate establishment, journalists will rarely be skeptical of the scientific establishment. Perhaps these unskeptical journalists don’t question scientists out of a belief that scientists’ pronouncements are free of the self-interest that taints politicians or corporations. Or perhaps these journalists, who are themselves rarely scientifically literate, blindly accept the views of scientific authority figures because they lack the training to assess rival views. Or perhaps these journalists fear being subjected to ridicule if they buck politically correct views. Whatever the reasons for journalistic deference to dogma in science, the victim is the information-consuming public, which at best is kept in the dark, at worst is duped.
All of which boils down to "lazy and stupid".
h/t Ken (Kulak)
Not really. It all boils down instead to "corrupt". The goal of the "scientific" establishment that "journalists" will not question is One World government with Socialism for all. And that is ALSO the goal of "journalists". So why would one expect "journalists" to question the "science"? Now they DO enthusiastically question any science which OPPOSES that goal. So that makes everything hunky-dory!
I'll go with lazy and stupid first. Totally devoid of any intellectual curiosity. Feed in press release - churn out news story, repeat.
But don't you think it's unusual, Jamie MacMaster, how they NEVER do that for a press release which OPPOSES their world view?
You're too kind, Jamie McMaster. IMO, the MSM are in the pockets of the AGW, aka "global warming," apparatchiks who share their left-lib-"progressive" world view.
Never mind that the genuine science has never backed the alarmist AGW agenda and that the AGW cheerleaders have suppressed scientific data which prove that the Earth is not warming at the rate the AGW cheerleaders say it is. The MSM prints what their friends and fellow-activists tell them to print. And, that's all.
It's refreshing to see that the Financial Post has published this article. It should be required reading for all teachers who are pushing the Suzuki/Gore myth of global warming -- and have been for the past 10 to 15 years. Anyone truly concerned about being a good steward of the Earth's resources should not be relying on bogus propaganda to back their views -- and should definitely not be teaching a faulty global warming model to their students.
You forgot "Incompetent"
And in more cases than I care to count "Semi-Literate"
Actually, as a scientist myself, I suspect that the reason is that science (a) is hard, (b) takes time, and (c) rarely produces unequivocal results that are easy to represent in plain language in a dozen column-inches. If you're doing science right, you have to publish your observations, formulate a falsifiable hypothesis logically deriving from the, publish all experimental data, present contrarian evidence and error bars, and account for (or at the very least acknowledge and publish) data that you can't explain. You can't do this in a 700-word bolus of clever rhetoric.
In fact, I would go so far as to argue that any science that CAN be described in the space of a newspaper op-ed piece should automatically be considered suspect, because in order to jam it into a small space, you have to leave a lot out. And the more complex and poorly-understood the subject, the more likely it is that a great deal of important material is being left out.
As for journalists, I'm not interested in getting my analysis on Kyrgyzstan from someone who doesn't know where it is or how to spell it, or on climate change from somebody who can't tell the Quarternary Period from the Quadratic Equation. It's one of the reasons I gave up on the MSM years ago.
Interesting debate developing. Are the journalists lazy and stupid or complicit.
I would go with complicit, as the American Thinker talks about Europe and by extension the ideological brethren on the left in North America.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/the_death_of_nation-states_and_the_rise_of_empire.html
A "must read" for Danielle Smith.
What is it we do know?
We know the Earth's climate has been changing since it's inception.
We know that higher CO2 levels in the past have followed warming and that warming doesn't follow higher CO2 levels.
We know every climate change alarmist is politically aligned with communists, socialists and one world government types.
Thats all I need to know.
I'm with Jamie on this; never attribute to malice what is easily explained by stupidity.
I've never met anyone who went into journalism because s/he was skilled at math and science. And once you're in journalism, the beats you aspire to are politics or Hollywood. Those without the chops drift into sports, if they're men, and into "lifestyle" if they're women. A small few fall into finance. No one goes looking for science. So the chance of finding a science 'journalist' who knows which end of a bunsen burner is the business one is pretty small.
And most of the 'scientists' are pretty sloppy as well. I read an article recently from the head of the "Space Institute" at the University of Houston, who wrote "[Humans will need] 20 trillion watts of power per year". This is as non-sensensical as writing "People will need 120 million miles per hour each month", yet he made the same error three times in a 300-word piece.
I don't think most of these people have the mental capacity to participate in a conspiracy.
"...the victim is the information-consuming public..."
He missed a victim. The shareholders/owners of just about every media outlet that doesn't begin with the letters f-o-x.
Journalists writing for a daily rag are one thing.
But what about previously respectable periodicals?
Nat Geo and Scientific American?
As far as the AGW scam reporting, it's blatant collusion.
'Corrupt" or 'lazy & stupid ??
Most editors are the former and most journalists are the later. The editorial system forces journalists to be so if they are not already so inclined.
Major media operatives see themselves as part of today's 'Ruling Class' - politicians, bureaucracy, universities, United Nations, Hollywood elite.
What better tool than climate alarmism to push the 'Ruling Class ultimate goal - 'One World Government' !!
The editors favorite and most effective tool is bias by omission. If a prominent climate realist had suddenly joined the alarmist crowd that story would have been a coordinated, world wide media blitz - for weeks. But when a prominent alarmist pusher like James Lovelock recants and admits it was all a big mistake ..... crickets.
When I ask my alarmist friends if they know of a James Lovelock - yes yes! is the response. If I ask them have they heard he has recanted his alarmist opinion? - first they ever heard it.
I never thought I would ever have seen the day when scientists and editors and teachers would be the biggest threat to my freedoms and democracy. The Russian Army?! Hah, folded without a shot.
Am I wrong about any of this?
So-called "journalists" imagine they are members of an intellectual elite,that rarely,if ever, makes mistakes.
To admit even the slightest error on their part would see them cast down from the intellectual heights into the world of us unwashed peasants.Note the condescension in the columns of most MSM writers addressing us.
They have championed AGW,therefore,they MUST be right.
It's EGO,in capital letters.
The MSM is in difficulty trying to keep a crumbling scam backstopped.
In olden days when some piece of Marxist gossamer fluff would come unstuck, lefty
rags would offer a one page op ed by an "expert" from academe who tidied things up.
Unmentioned would be the fact that the expert usually was the same person who had
spoon fed the "making a hash of things" dumb journos in the first place.
All this global warming BS was started by a bunch of very smart guys from Enron getting
the ear of some megalomaniac politicians in Washington looking for new ways to tax the
peasants big time. Everything that came later was just window dressing.
.
I would go with cowardly. It takes courage to go against the majority consensus and publish something that would get you austercized from your peer group.
Courage is not something the press is noted for these days and the left is a group think machine. When the science is settled it is settled.
One World government is a tantalizing goal for the ruling class.
When there are many different, competing forms of gov't in the world it is easy to compare and see that the socialistic, communistic and dictatorial ones are inferior.
But if there was only One Government in the world how could we rate without comparisons?
I go along with corrupt.
Just look at the letters section of any major paper. They're happy to print any numbers of warmist views, but rarely will they print the opposing viewpoint which regularly debunks the warmists.
One World Government would lower the bar not raise it. How would Canadians like to live as they do in the third world? Because we work hard and have a government that lets us we have a high standard of living. It won't be up with the poor,it will be down with the rich. In Canada we are all rich compared to the third world.
Wilful ignorance, brought about by laziness and simple lack of curiosity, abetted by greedy self interest, leads many so called journalists to jump on the global warming band wagon exactly as recommended to them in journalism schools. I remember Ted Byfield refusing to hire jounalism school graduates to write for the Alberta Report magazine for that very reason. It takes a strong individual, with implicit reliance on his own judgement and common sense, to go against the grain.
I favour the corrupt AND stupid explanation.
Corrupt because journalists fancy themselves the tellers of truth and exposers of malfeasance. If only the truth was known, people would favour a big one-world government that could right all wrongs that journalists believe exist. Facts that do not fit the narrative of big problems in need of big solutions just don't interest them.
Stupid because, as noted above, journalists are usually deficient in math and science. It is why they are journalists.
AGW was policy created by progressive elites as a policy to advance their agenda. It is a policy plank created to benefit the left - saviors of the planet and mankind- and hobble the right.
No different than the abortion issue, gay marriage, racism issues, feminism, and how they were used as blunt political instruments.
The dirty, not so secret, secret is that left does not truly care about any of the above, only how these issues can be manipulated to gain power or maintain power.
This is demonstrated every time the mask slips - like when Catsmeat Kinsella makes racial slurs.
Or Ted Kennedy's and Bill Clintons actual treatment of women. Or the lefts treatment of any Black, gay or female Conservative. One could go on and on.
The Media Party knows precisely what AGW was designed for and how it is to be used ideologically. As a policy tool, as bait and then as a blunt instrument.
Same as gay marriage, abortion and issues of race.
The Media Party is corrupt, not lazy.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall collapsed. The failures of socialism and communism were out in the open for all the world to see.
The ruling class, leftist types had to find a plan 'B'. Hey!, how about we infiltrate and take over the environmental movement? Many, many advantages.
- we can shame the peasants into going along with the scam by playing on their environmental guilt.
- we will use some kind of wacky science. Most will not take the time to look into the science and the scheme will be in place before we are outed.
- we need a villain .. oil companies. Perfect!
- we need the media on side. That's easy,.. arts majors are easily duped. And besides, since the printing press was invented media has always been about political control not about reporting the real story.
- we need a collection plate for this para religious movement, .. Green Taxes !!
- we need a mechanism to allow the main operatives to become extremely wealthy, ... carbon credits, speaking engagements !!
- we have to be able to quickly brain wash the children, .... the public school system.
- we have to be able to camouflage our socialism, ... "green" legislation!
- we have to bias wx stations to the warm side, ... asphalt, BBQs, vehicle radiators!! Perfect.
- we have to, most importantly find a substance that encompass the oil companies as bad, the atmosphere as the ultimate enviro worry and something that can easily be mistaken for a poison, .... CARBON DIOXIDE !! Fossil fuels make CO2. CO2 goes into the atmosphere. Most people, especially journalists may mistake CO2 for deadly carbon MONoxide. Perfect!
And so it came to be.
Am I wrong?
Lazy, stupid and obsessed with shiny objects.
As was said previously, MATH IS HARD, and the lazy go elsewhere, into creative writing, and oh look, journalism.
Much more fun and easy to write about the wonders of Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan and other train wrecks where cut and paste, and illogic rule. One can say anything about those trollops, and be accurate.
Yes, lazy and stupid, the MSM at your service.
The Royal Astronomical Ssociety press release.
Did exploding stars help life on Earth to thrive?
Pace Solomon, it doesn't refute evolution, although the people at the Institute for Creation Reasearch do love Svensmark. [not his fault]
And Solomon's "censored science" spin on this is totally bogus. If your concern is censored science, you might ask about the government minders that followed our scientists at the latest International Polar Year conference. Shades of old-style apparatchiks.
The idea is wonderfully mind-expanding. The latest version of Cosmoclimatology. The small boy in all of us would love it all to be down to Cosmic Rays. But as one skeptic once said "Cosmologists. Often in error, never in doubt. "
actually, there is one thing everyone in here misses, humans are "believers" by nature, and rarely question their belief, witness kristians, they do NOT question their belief, if they did, they would not retain their belief system, they would demand "solid proof", which NO religeon provides
then there is the fact that a 2009-10 study showed that 85% of USA jurnos were democraps, nuff said on that one
DN at April 29, 10:42 AM
U completely missed the point, and that is they can deliver a "pro" POV on gorebull warming, so there is nothing stopping them from delivering a contrare POV, even just an over view of a study with no bias at all. No one needs to write a "book" to state a conclusion of a study
"The dirty, not so secret, secret is that left does not truly care about any of the above, only how these issues can be manipulated to gain power or maintain power."
"The failures of socialism and communism were out in the open for all the world to see."
ward and ron understand the strategy of the enviro-left aka Marxist Bolsheviks well.
"As far as the AGW scam reporting, it's blatant collusion.
Posted by: G at April 29, 2012 11:44 AM"
If they play ball, toss and spin in unison, they might be draft picks for the NWO team.
Oh come on now. Just because a journalist is lazy, foolish and ignorant doesn't mean (s)he doesn't know which side his/her bread is buttered on. Said journalists simply print the crap their corporate masters call for. If the head office calls for global warming stories the journalists will produce stories about global warming.
I agree with Kevin (12:08) that journalists are scared. Fearful is waaaay ahead of lazy and stupid, in this case, by about sixty lengths.
"Big" stories, like the National Astronomical Observatory's announcements that we're heading into a period of global cooling, and that recent sunsput activity is similar to that before the last mini ice age, have always been journalist's bread-and-butter. If it wasn't for the socially-enforced -- career-threateningly-enforced -- taboo against questioning the "consensus" about global warming they'd be all over it.
Now a@c, you fail to recognize that the Socialism of One World Government would NOT lower the standards for ALL people. The Right People would still have a high standard of living. It is just the Mere Citizens who would suffer.
Mark Matis at April 29, 2012 9:03 AM
Don't find it unusual at all, Mark
The opposing sides can't/don't generate anywhere near the amount of press releases and propoganda that the idiots and parasites do. It's a matter of volume and frequency.
Take AGW in Canada for example. On one side you have Suzuki, CPAWS, Ontario Nature, Environmental Defence, WWF, Federal Ministries, Provincial Ministries, Conservation Authorities, etc., etc., and more money and influence than we can imagine.
On the other side - Tim Ball and Tom Harris.
Is the media being selective, in the sense that they don't report on the 'other' side? Sure. But it all comes back to being too lazy, dull and incurious to do a bit of real investigative journalism.
If I could add one point to your list Ron, its that everything - absolutely everything has a "carbon footprint".
Whether it occurs in its manufactur, or its transport, or its usage.
So he who controls carbon controls all - every single aspect of mankinds daily lives.
IMO thats why CO2 was selected as the demon gas that the UN must control and ration.
How many urnalists from Liberal media have written books on climate change or it's twin global warming? That in it's self is why they ignore science they don't agree with, they have a horse in the climate change race.
Check out Thylacine's posts in the comments section. He's awesome.
The media establishment has no interest of any sort in producing accurate or intelligent material. The lowest common denominator in their world is what fills the page or the time slot in order to justify their existance and advertising billing.
Left with no other motivation at the highest level ... all that can be expected from the lowest level is the sort of crap you see every day.
As the consumer public tires at the irrelevant crap offered ... the money dries up.
It baffles me .... that anyone expects anything different.
And to our point, proven, for what matters as 'news' to the MSM, journalists, and the credibility of the Oblameya White House?
White House Correspondents' Dinner - Kardashian, Clooney, Lohan among celebrity crowd
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Photos+White+House+Correspondents+Dinner+Kardashian+Clooney+Lohan+among/6537880/story.html
Yeah, Lindsay Lohan has a place in the White House /sarc....blue dress anybody?
All of which boils down to "lazy and stupid".
The bane of Mankind
It seems that the media have consolidated for the One World Gument thugs against all of us! This video gives a great explanation that should alarm all of us - a bonus cringe for Canadians, David Frum(p) is featured at about 5 min into the video displaying his nasty temper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V833Ff_bkJE#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V833Ff_bkJE#
Posted by: Jema54 at April 29, 2012 9:25 PM
Too bad. He was doing fine until he hit "evidence of military-grade explosives in the World Trade Center" part.
Now he's in my idiot file.
The problem is we have "Journalists" these days instead of reporters.
A Reporter was a hard-bitten, hard-drinking cynical SOB who didn't take anybody's word for ANYTHING.
A Journalist keeps a diary.
So wait a second. The numbnuts who wrote this is using recent evidence of how super novas might have had an impact on evolution as "a powerful refutation of Darwin’s theory of evolution"????
Let's be clear. Just because Darwin first describe the process, doesn't mean that everything he said is correct. And that is the point of that study. It doesn't say that life didn't evolve as most of the jibbering, moon-eyed god-freaks claim, but that there could have been points during evolution where things leapt ahead.
Good lord.
Meanwhile... the planet continues to get warmer.