Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/06/2010 9:13:48 AM PST by PapaBear3625
Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.
It was not Private Eye, or the BBC or the News of the World, but a retired electrical engineer in Northampton, David Holland, whose freedom-of-information requests caused the Climategate scientists to break the law, according to the Information Commissioner. By contrast, it has so far attracted little attention that the leaked emails of Climategate include messages from reporters obsequiously seeking ammunition against the sceptics. Other emails have shown reporters meekly changing headlines to suit green activists, or being threatened with ostracism for even reporting the existence of a sceptical angle: ‘Your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists,’ one normally alarmist reporter was told last year when he slipped briefly off message. ‘I sense that you are about to experience the “Big Cutoff” from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included.’
[...]
In a word, the internet. The Climate Consensus may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to cameras and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
The media (at least in the UK) are finally starting to pay attention that the hoax is now unsustainable, and the credit goes to the hundreds of online guerrilla reporters.
The Spectator article goes into how mainstream journalists have been co-opted by the insiders, who they rely upon to be sources, and who will cut them off if they sense any slackening in journalistic butt kissing. The same phenomenon can be seen between reporters and some politicians, who have the practice of cutting off access to reporters and news organizations that are not butt kissers (eg, Fox News)
That's a pretty gutsy approach for a hack scientist. You piss off the guy just when you're also forcing the guy to scramble for new sources, many of which might actually tell him the truth.
Big Spectator UK article on how the Internet community, through its independence from the "insiders", exposed the global warming hoax.
FR has been a leader in destroying this cult.
Pray for America’s Freedom
The trick is, you don't actually cut him off completely. You just take your time returning his calls, and are less energetic in digging up material for him to use in his articles, until you sense that the reporter is once again your "prison b**ch".
The dirty little secret of reporting is how many of them are abysmally ignorant, and depend on their "sources" to practically write their articles for them.
My daughter worked as a news intern. Much of what happens is copy/pasting of "news releases" from the sources.
Exactly. If you don’t think for yourself and refuse to take anything ANYONE tells you at face value, you’ll just end up a whore for whomever knows best how to manipulate you.
Like AIG and Goldman Sachs bailouts.
Like Media integrity.
Like Democrat's concern for the common man.
etc. etc.
FR, with it's large readership, has been very valuable in getting the word out, on this and other issues.
WattsUpWithThat.com, climateaudit.org, and others did the basic digging that provided the initial info that FR spread.
Exactly. You point out a big reason why this has the Establishment very worried. For the last couple of years, the official line has been that "global warming denyers" were "right wingnuts", "ignorant", "dangerous opponents to vital action", etc, etc. Now, it's turning out that we were right.
Can't allow THAT. If people see the mechanisms by which a large and complicated hoax has been able to be perpetrated on a world wide audience, with the collusion of governments and business, they may start paying attention to lonely whistle-blowers in other areas...
GW ping
The internet however, is filled with millions of well-educated individuals, many of whom are experts in their fields. When they read a news report on a internet site, they will oftentimes comment on the article; frequently enriching its worth, and giving other readers better understanding.
(Of course, the internet also has folks like myself!)
Being as dumb as a boxful of hammers, the media, all forms, and advertising, all venues, are like a giant oil tanker changing course, there's little evidence of it yet.
Or like dinosaurs, whose central system was slow as molasses, and it took days to realize that they were in mortal danger.
Not a surprise. "Advertising" hacks, most of them, are among the castoffs of the educational system. TV reporters, specially the cute ones, run a close second. Science idiots, all.
Well, they could seek out people with opposing beliefs. Ask them to poke holes in the statement from the first source. If the result isn't convincing, that helps validate the first source. If the answer IS convincing, go back to the first source and ask them to defend their statements and poke holes in the objections of the denier.
Pretty soon, the guy with weak arguments starts to hem and haw, and call you an idiot. Then you know who's lying. You don't even have to understand the science to have a working bull$hit gauge. People ask me why I don't believe in AGW, and I do have scientific objections, but mostly my skepticism is based on the behavior of the believers. If they're acting like liars act, there's a pretty good chance they're liars.
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If it quacks....
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They’re not “dumb as a box of hammers,” there isn’t a single promotor of ‘Global Warming’ that doesn’t know that it is pure bunk, but what else do they have?
This is the last straw for their global socialist agenda, so they’re going down fighting.
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gleeaikin, have you decided which side you are on? - Yesterday you were trying to blame El Nino on global warming.
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Boy, ain't THAT the truth. I was in my twenties when I figured out that EVERY news article on pretty much any topic in which I was well-acquainted with the subject, had one or more MAJOR errors. EVERY article.
I think there’s two contingents. The “scientists” and politicians are as you describe. But take these journalists for example. They’ve been trained (not educated) to believe in science and government, especially on an issue where it seems MORE government power is the answer. So there is a “sincere but stupid” group. Not that the gullibility would be unavoidable if they were to be open-minded, as I pointed out in the other post. But while they still bear the responsibility for their own ignorance, they are at least sincere.
What frosts me is that t he AIG and Goldman Sachs bailouts have such significant dissimilarities. At “Forbes CEO Compensation” I tracked CEO pay for the 15 top financials for 5/3/07, 4/30/08 and 4/22/09.
While AIG’s CEO salary went from $18 million, to 11 M, to the guy who is currently working for $0. On the other hand at GS, the CEO had $37 M in ‘07, then up to $74 M, and currently $26 M. Yet we hear so much more about AIG being such bad guys. Of course, GS had/has Paulson. Sorry to go off topic, but this stuff really gets to me.
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