Why the daily media are getting it wrong on Climategate

It's the biggest story in news right now, if the fact that merely typing the letter "C" into Google News search instantly brings up "climategate as first option":

But despite being the most popular news search term on Google right now, surprisingly few mainstream media outlets have given anything remotely like balanced coverage, let alone even mention of, Climategate.

Is it because MSM journalists are overwhelmingly liberal/green in their worldview? Is it something simpler, like mere incompetence? Or is it a combination of both. I tend toward the latter view.

It's incompetence, because my journalistic colleagues have, for the most part, failed to actually read the emails, and their implications for the credibility of global warming science.

Emails like this candid admission, for example:

"We know with certainty that we know f***-all," wrote one US scientist to his colleague Keith Briffa at the University of East Anglia's CRU unit. Context? We know virtually nothing about longer term temperature variability.

On the one hand, the scientists at NIWA, CRU and the IPCC confidently call in their tame journalists for a briefing to talk about record temperatures or similar, and claim that modern warming is "unprecedented", but behind the scenes their emails suggest they know full well they're making it up on the hoof and hoping no one finds out.

Instead of reading emails like that one, most journalists have continued to rely on the men in white coats to explain it to them. It's as if they are so uncertain of their own skills in deciphering emails written in the English vernacular that they need an authority figure to pronounce the meaning all the time.

There is, I confess, a certain tendency towards obsequiousness in daily journalism. I remember in my early days in the radio biz working alongside a senior colleague who, despite seeing a bloodspattered body in the streets with his own eyes, would nonetheless file reports saying "There are unconfirmed reports that a man is dead…but police have not officially confirmed this."

Sadly, this same mentality is affecting the mainstream media in regard to climate science. Green lobby groups have so insidiously woven their tentacles into major newsrooms that the journalists can't face independent evidence like Climategate without feeling the need to burst into tears and run for Mama to gently explain and tell them the mean skeptics are just "making it up", that they're "taking it out of context", and it's "much ado about nothing".

Essentially, the revelation that the top scientists advising the UN IPCC have been fabricating their presentations to eliminate inconvenient data, that they have conspired to shut down other scientists from questioning their work, and that they have corrupted the peer-review process so much that none of the so-called leading studies on global warming can now be trusted – essentially all of this is too much for daily news journalists to comprehend. They don't understand the science, they need someone to explain it, and the people they run to for comfort are the same ones who faked the data or their close mates.

I come back to the key graphic I tried to slip into a TV3 news broadcast this week – proof that CRU head Phil Jones has lied – either to the media or to one of his closest colleagues.

Leaving aside anything else in the Climategate treasure trove, those two statements are definitive proof that the IPCC's top scientists are prepared to lie to cover their tracks.

To make MSM journalists wake up to this one almost has to rub their noses in Climategate on a daily basis.

The cold hard reality is that with millions of hits on Google, more in fact than there are for the phrase "global warming", Climategate is rapidly spreading throughout the world and with every hour that passes the daily media are losing more and more public credibility.

On media websites around the world, feedback comments from the public are excoriating the major media for their failure to properly report Climategate, or the positive spin they've tried to put on it.

If these readers/viewers eventually decide they can't trust MSM journalists, they'll stop watching and those outlets will suffer advertising losses, and the journalists responsible may eventually lose their jobs.

Still, there are signs of hope. In The Atlantic today, journalist Clive Crook admits he was wrong to dismiss the emails and rely on official assurances. He now says:

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

…I'm also surprised by the IPCC's response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side "deniers".

While I'm listing surprises, let me note how disappointed I was by The Economist's coverage of all this. "Leaked emails do not show climate scientists at their best," it observes. No indeed. I should say I worked at the magazine for years, admire it as much as ever, and rely on the science coverage especially. But I was baffled by its reaction to the scandal. "Little wonder that the scientists are looking tribal and jumpy, and that sceptics have leapt so eagerly on such tiny scraps as proof of a conspiracy," its report concludes. Tiny scraps?  I detest anti-scientific thinking as much as The Economist does. I admire expertise, and scientific expertise especially; like any intelligent citizen I am willing to defer to it. But that puts a great obligation on science. The people whose instinct is to respect and admire science should be the ones most disturbed by these revelations. The scientists have let them down, and made the anti-science crowd look wise. That is outrageous.

Perhaps my colleagues at TV3 and elsewhere should take a much longer, deeper look at the Climategate documents. Maybe then they'll understand why this stuff is kryptonite to the carefully airbrushed theories of anthropogenic global warming.

In the meantime while the MSM play catchup, stay abreast of the latest developments by reading the Telegraph's James Delingpole, Climate Depot's Marc Morano, The Herald-Sun's Andrew Bolt or the team at The Examiner. All are doing a sterling job where their print and broadcast colleagues have failed.

Comments

[Jim]

I reckon we should no longer label the MSM as such, but use the label LSM - being Lame-stream Media,following Bernie Goldberg, because that's a far more fitting label. It certainly applies to NZ too.

[Daniel]

Govts buy into Climate Change as it's a way of netting huge tax revenue and is a UN plan for One World Govt. National are signed up to it, where was the referendum for that one? Thanks, John, petrol and power to rise next year, and for what?

[Fitzy]

Ian, good post, its fair to assume that the Subs and the Editors are the green gatekeepers here in NZ, whats the bypass route? Obviously the Web and sites like TBR are crowbarring a way in, I haven't totally given up on the MSM, but the ground don't get much more shakey than this...ignoring a scandal of this size? Surely thats media suicide.

[AcidComments]

Of Interest:

Climategate: Penn State Professor Mann under investigation

Penn State has been overwhelmed with the response from the scientific community. It was left with no other option but investigate. The official Penn State statement:

http://www.examiner.com/
x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m11d30-Climategate-Penn-State-Professor-Mann-under-investigation

Climate science email controversy headed for Capitol Hill airing

http://thehill.com//blogs/
e2-wire/677-e2-wire/69795-climate-email-controversy-headed-for-capitol-hill-airing