UPDATE: Andrew Revkin responds with an update on Dot Earth, which I repeat here. He now agrees that privacy expectations were not justified in the UEA Climategate emails. Perhaps now we’ll see some discussions of them, with publications of selected Climategate emails, on Dot Earth in the future.
– Anthony
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From the NYT Dot Earth Blog, Monday, Nov 29th, 2010:
[Nov. 29, 3:41 p.m. | Updated In the last couple of days, some conservative commentators have compared the treatment of the East Anglia climate files in this post with the dissemination of Wikileaks files by The Times and charged that a gross double standard exists.
I’ll note two things about my coverage of the unauthorized distribution of the climate files:
First, while I initially did not publish the contents of the climate files and e-mails (at the request of Times lawyers, considering the uncertain provenance and authenticity of the materials at the time), I did (from the start) provide links to the caches of material set up elsewhere on the Web.
Second, in the rush on the day the files were distributed across the Web, I called them “private” when, in fact, I should have said their senders had presumed they were private. As I’ve said off and on since then, given that much of the research discussed in the exchanges was done using taxpayers’ money, any expectation of privacy wasn’t justified.]
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The NYT published details in 2005 about US efforts to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, and is publishing info from the stolen Wikileaks Iraq messages, but they they wouldn’t publish the ClimateGate emails.
Mr. Revkin, your selective bias, and the bias of your newspaper (and your Dot Earth Blog) is screaming loudly for all to hear.
From Powerline blog:
The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks. My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined to publish or post any of the Climategate e-mails because they had been illegally obtained.
Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s inspiring statement of principle:
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”
Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin’s statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the public interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.
Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. Perhaps something other than principle and logic were at work then, or are at work now. Given the Times’s outrageous behavior during the Bush administration, the same observation applies to the Times’s protestations of good faith.
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h/t to WUWT reader “rk”
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Lol..
“… and the pubic interest …”
I think it should say public. 😀
Reply: Fixed ~ctm
I seem to remember that the BBC had access to those e-mails a month before they were released.
The NYT has been listening to the BBC as to ways to spread alarm and despondency, not answer criticism and bias everything to what they wish would happen.
brilliant typo
…..and the pubic interest in their revelations as …..
Their interest is below the belt.
Just love your blog Anthony.
Cheers
Reply: Fixed ~ctm
Greetings from the City where they publish this POS.
Don’t worry, they Can’tcun us any more. And arent.
Ah, yes. The Fourth Estate at its hypocritical finest!
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”
Well picked Anthony, This is the day of its o.k. to work against the interests of your country and do any damage, including collateral damage to those that report or advise your government. Give selective lip service to privacy but only if it suits the agenda and sells newspapers, otherwise ignore the obvious.
I guess that is why we live in a democracy, we can mock our freedom and seemingly be immune to the harm we create, and protect those that should be exposed for the liberties they take, with both our lifestyles and in the final analysis our freedom.
Oh to be a coffee latte rebel in their own lifetime.!!
“Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. “
No you simply disagree with their determination of public interest. Claiming that people who apply a given principle to a particular situation differently than you do means they don’t believe in or uphold the principle at all is lazy at best.
One situation is private emails between individuals the other is secret but official records of government policy. You can claim there are reasons for or against one being released over the other but the idea that basic logic prohibits one opinion on one situation and a different opinion on the other is ridiculous especially given the general implication in this post and this site in general that the “Climategate” release is “good” but the wikileaks one is “bad”.
These newspapers of this calibre are wondering why they are going the way of the buggy whip. Obsolescence through stupidity is infinity worse than through technology.
One can adapt to technology but not to stupidity.
I have said it before and will say it many times again.
The only thing worse than a hypocrite is a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Great exposition, Anthony. Double standard is all over the “morality” of most warmers. That’s why they continue to lose credibility and integrity. Shame on them and the NYT dual editorial policy.
In line with the Xmas spirit – bah, humbugary!
By the way, has one of their brilliant investigative reporters established what the UK police have so far fail to establish? Or did I miss it? I stand to be corrected.
On the subject of hypocracy people should be aware that in 2005, Pachauri helped set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life. He is currently its scientific advisor.
http://www.glorioil.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=10
Here are some more:
http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2009/11/celebrity-climate-change-hypocrites.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/james-cameron-labelled-climate-change-hypocrite-2115151.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=arrZzzbIySgQ
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23390848-with-five-private-jets-travolta-still-lectures-on-global-warming.do
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/64907
Eco-hypocritical general articles:
http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/heat/861-are-you-an-eco-hypocrite.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-478845/Whats-green-flies-An-eco-hypocrite-wont-stay-grounded-say-researchers.html
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/10/how-not-to-be-an-eco-hypocrite.html
Both NYT positions go against the interests of the USA. To publish Climategate could prevent foolish and damaging legislation, so NYT refused. To sit quiet on Wikileaks could protect our position and sources, so NYT refused. Whose side are they on? Not ours!
declined to publish or post any of the Climategate e-mails because they had been illegally obtained.
Maybe they were legally obtained? I.e. it is a deliberate dissemination of material in the form of a leak to serve/justify various purposes, diplomatic or war mongering or whatever.
Already on the net there exist “conspiracy of government and media” guesses .
Maybe the saber rattling over on the Korean peninsula is more than a game. Maybe it is a coincidence and not a trick to draw attention away from there. Time will tell. In such a framework, starting WWIII is much more important than the puny climate wars, and all is fair in love and war .
Why am I reminded of this film scene?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f7f_1190726907
the NYT are tomato heads red inside and out
“I seem to remember that the BBC had access to those e-mails a month before they were released.”
This is one of those Dawkinsian memes that will never go away once somebody mistakenly said it.
What actually occurred was that one BBC correspondent (Paul Hudson) was able to confirm that some of the leaked emails were genuine as he’d seem them a month before – but only those that he was actually copied on!
The emails involved were those from the team asking Black/Harrabin to intervene to stop Hudson putting sceptical comments in his blog – typical outrageous team behaviour which Black/Harrabin apparently didn’t even see as a problem!.
He certainly did not have access to the whole shebang.
Anthony said:
“Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. “
sharper00 replied:
“No you simply disagree with their determination of public interest. ”
No! There and throughout your diversionary comments imply that the reason for not publishing the Climategate files was principled on the revelations being of inadequate public interest (as if!). You completely ignore that it was clearly stated that the reasons for non-publication were because the files were obtained illegally and because they were not intended for public scrutiny – you know, just like the stolen State Department files. Trying to defend the NYT’s obvious agenda driven hypocrisy will only get you soiled.
“News reporting is not a matter of discovering and publishing facts. Rather it is a process of gathering accounts from a very limited number of approved sources, and stitching them together to provide a defensible narrative. Any relationship with actual events, much less the truth, is entirely coincidental – and usually accidental”.
Once you uderstand that everything falls into place.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/cravenly-conformist.html
No sharper00, they weren’t emails between individuals acting in a private capacity. They were employees going about officially sanctioned business.
I think the term “hypocrisy” is WAY off target here.
This is criminal fraud.
a) they know what they are doing
b) they are doing it deliberately
c) they know the cost to us, of their crime
Why are we all still so astonished that the majority of large MSM is a cleverly disguised (or even blatant) government/corporate propaganda tool? This is not new. Examples are endless, and this is just one. However, thanks to Anthony, a very solid case has been established here as a great and transparent example, and it needs a reply from the authors.
Will he get an intelligent rebuttal from the NYT? I won’t hold my breath.
WikiLeaks are a government tool, setting themselves up as a bastion of truth to cash in on their credibility on more important matters to come. Classic propaganda technique.
They were extremely muted over the Climategate affair (even released the 9/11 texts the same week to hide the Climategate headlines, as did Google with their inhouse story about the Michelle Obama primate pictures, in order to steal the tech headlines) and in July the Wikileaks founders said Climategate was overblown and didn’t discredit the science – it wasn’t and it does. Don’t be fooled.
“One situation is private emails between individuals the other is secret but official records of government policy.”
Oh please. Releasing govt secrets imperils national security and makes us all a little less safe while the so called private emails were between people funded by public money, about issues of public policy and on email servers belonging to their often publically funded places of employment.
If the Climategate emails were instead emails between BP engineers discussing how to hide flaws at an offshore well the press would have led on the front page.