UPDATE: I’ve made a change to my policy on media interaction. See below. -A
Strong headline, I know. But the headline is rooted in actions (and lack thereof). Readers may recall the smear job done by Guardian reporter Suzanne Goldenberg to Tom Harris at Carleton University in Ottawa which I covered in detail here: Fake moral outrage translated to smear: media upset that students can choose to take an elective course on climate change at Carleton.
Readers may also recall that in that story there’s a recorded transcript of the interview with Harris by Goldenberg, and it seems nothing substantive that Mr. Harris had to say made it in to Goldenberg’s story.
Before I published my investigation, Mr. Harris wrote a letter to the editor to the Guardian to set the record straight. It has been 10 days now and they still have not published it. Harris sent me a copy of the letter yesterday and I too sent a letter off to letters@guardian.co.uk and asked if they were going to publish it. According to my mail server logs, they received it, and it is now late in the day in London, so one can reasonably assume the answer was no. Since the Guardian does not apparently care about offering balanced reporting, (there’s no evidence it has been printed via Guardian’s own search) I’m presenting the letter from Mr. Harris here.
Hi Anthony,
Feel free to upload my letter to The Guardian (below) to your superb site (minus my home address at the end, please), as you were suggesting. I did get an auto-response from “Letters editor, the Guardian” so there is no question that they received it. But they never published it.
Spring has sprung in Ottawa. Hope it is nice in CA too!
Tom
From: Tom Harris
Sent: February 29, 2012 1:19 AM
To: ‘letters@guardian.co.uk’
Subject: Re – “Heartland associate taught ‘biased’ climate course at Ottawa university”, Feb 28, 2012
I am commenting about the article found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/28/heartland-associate-climate-scepticism-ottawa-university. I understand you may wish to shorten my letter somewhat.
To the editor,
As primary target of Guardian Environment Correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg’s attack piece “”Heartland associate taught ‘biased’ climate course at Ottawa university” (Feb 28), I am very disappointed with this, my first interaction with your publication.
Contrary to the headline of the article, when I last taught at Carleton University, ending in April 2011, I was in not a “Heartland associate”. As was made clear to Goldenberg in our communications, I did not become an unpaid policy advisor with Heartland until only a few months ago.
Contrary to Goldenberg’s assertion that “Heartland’s core mission is to discredit climate change”, Heartland is committed to encouraging a full, open and honest dialog about the issue, and I explained to Goldenberg that they even hosted a friendly public debate between a “skeptic” and an “alarmist” at their last climate conference in Washington DC seven months ago.
Contrary to Goldenberg’s statement that the review of the Earth Sciences course was “an expert audit”, I explained to her that it was conducted by biologists who did not even bother to communicate with me about their opinions of the course before going public. This is especially odd considering the lead author is a postdoctoral fellow at Carleton.
Contrary to assertions in the subject piece, the course is well supported by peer reviewed literature and was no way extreme, merely concluding that we are a long way from understanding climate science well enough to be able to make definitive forecasts about the future but that we must help vulnerable peoples adapt to inevitable climate change.
If Goldenberg really believes that statements such as “The only constant about climate is change”, “carbon dioxide is plant food” or “the Amazon jungle is a relatively new formation, in geological terms” are even slightly controversial, then I suggest she take Professor Patterson’s course in 2013. It can be taken via the Web at a modest fee.
Sincerely,
Tom Harris
Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Ontario K2A 4E2
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org
When one reads the Guardian’s editorial code:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2011/08/08/EditorialGuidelinesAug2011.pdf
The first paragraph reads:
“A newspaper’s primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted.”
Our most important currency is trust. This is as true today as when CP Scott marked the centenary of the founding of the Guardian with his famous essay on journalism in 1921.
And upon further reading we find:
3. Appendices, section 3.2
Opportunity to reply
A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for.
When the Guardian reporter doesn’t include significant points raised in an interview, then sets out to essentially create her own opinion about the story, and the editorial staff deny the right of reply in contradiction with their own policy, one can reasonably assume that The Guardian has blown its “currency of trust” on cheap thrills and is now bankrupt.
In the past, my policy has been to provide all media outlets and reporters with quotes and materials when they asked for it, for example when Fakegate broke, Suzanne Goldenberg asked for my reaction and I immediately supplied it. However, like many other reporters, she didn’t check the veracity of the documents first, and didn’t wait for my input that she requested, running the story irresponsibly to be “first” to smear Heartland (and me) thanks to the illegal act of Dr. Peter Gleick.
It seems clear to me that Goldenberg is biased, for example read how much she lauds Dr. Michael Mann here, but gives no ink to Harris in his long interview. She is also listed as producer of this laudatory video where we are treated to dozens of pictures of I ♥ Climate Scientists:
The end credits of this Guardian sponsored video read:
And yet the Guardian can’t be bothered to print a letter to the editor from Tom Harris defending himself. The bias displayed is gobsmacking.
As a result of this systemic journalistic malpractice, and since it is evident through my own experiences as well as watching the experiences of others that the Guardian has no interest in allowing “A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for.” nor even waiting for accurate information in the first place, I am going to institute a new policy in regards to my interaction with the Guardian.
New policy: whenever the Guardian asks for input, my reply shall be:
Previous interactions with The Guardian experienced by myself, and by others that I have been able to witness have demonstrated that the The Guardian has no interest in reporting the skeptic side of the climate change issue fairly, but instead breaks its own policy and journalistic standards in an effort to provide what appears to be deadline oriented and opinionated reporting. Therefore, since I have no expectation that anything I say will be used fairly nor accurately, I decline comment, because to comment is an exercise in futility, and will reserve my comments for legitimate news organizations.
UPDATE: In retrospect, while this policy may be warranted by the irresponsible behavior displayed by the Guardian, it probably isn’t the best solution. So, I’ve decided to take a different tack.
Instead my policy will be:
To always ask for all questions to be submitted to me in written form. I already do that in most instances due to my hearing problem and difficulty with telephone communications. When I reply with my comments in written form, I demand that they be used as is without editing.
Then at the same time I send comments to the media outlet, I shall post the record of questions and comments made here as a new story, even if the media outlet has not gone to press yet. This will ensure that my comments are not distorted, and that there is a record of the media interaction.
I urge others to follow my lead. Record and post your media interactions. Force the issue of accountability and fairness.
There’s also the UK press complaints commission, which may provide some modicum of relief, but I have my doubts.
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Maybe Dr Roy Spencer has a way forward?
“A Technical Apology to Juliet Eilperin”
March 7th, 2012 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/a-technical-apology-to-juliet-eilperin/
Mike B says:
March 9, 2012 at 9:16 am
…Its only readers are middle class yoghurt knitting bed wetters from London and it has always been an alarmist hard left wing rag…
Mike, I’ve told you before not to refer to BBC employees like that!
/sarc
This lack of accurate reporting is part and parcel of the Guardian’s culture.
In The Guardian on Tuesday 31 August 2010 Monbiot said:
I told him that he was wrong and provided references here:
and here:
It meant nothing and no correction. Furthermore, I have just noticed that the huge amount of recommendations I got for my comment have been erased to just 2. They have now resorted to censoring votes. Doesn’t surprise me.
The good news is that their circulation has gone into freefall. 😉
Anthony, as others are telling you, the Guardian is notorious for biased activism pretending to be news.
If you search for Mann you’ll find that they have published five separate pieces of Mannian propaganda recently, portraying him as an honest, highly regarded scientist being attacked, on 5 March, 3 March, 27 Feb, 17 Feb, 17 Feb (yes, two that day).
The reason the Grauniad hasn’t printed your “correction” is because the original is essentially accurate. Your previous post didn’t identify any errors in the report critcising TH’s course.
TH claims to have only been associated with Heartland “only a few months ago” but he is wrong [snip. That is pure projection. ~dbs, mod.]
> “Heartland’s core mission is to discredit climate change”
Seems pretty accurate to me.
> Heartland is committed to encouraging a full, open and honest dialog about the issue
Very dubious. Spreading FUD would be more like it.
The “The Guardian” is well aware of the practice of bias and they have given us a show and tell to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge. Here we see they are very well versed in speaking from both sides of their mouth. If you need spin, these are your go to people.
“How many credibility blows can one movement survive?”
Credibility only matters to those people who are fundamentally dishonest. Those who are in on the fraud, and who profit from the fraud, will never be, and that’s why they can never be swayed, only defeated.
Nice at least to see all the masks coming off. Next step is to acknowledge that there is no effective operating difference between the Guardian and the NYT.
Look, mate, codes of ethics in journalism went out the window years ago in the UK. The industry’s haemhorraging cash, readers and so it spends less and less on good journalism and more and more on paid-for-drivel political pamphlets. There’s no way that can’t be case when you have James Delingpole calling warmistas everything under the sun without being censured for libel; only on the next day you have Geoffrey Lean writing such warmista drivel as to make you laugh out loud.
You’ll find the same in most aspects of the paper now: even reports on football matches are paid-for lying – you know this if you’ve seen games live and then read what you’re supposed to have seen but didn’t in fact see. In that case, it’s all about moving players on, agents touting them about, competitors trash talking them or reporters simply watching it on Sky TV at home.
The time has come to ignore these traditional media houses and realise that you get more people at your site than they get at theirs!
And why? Because you get experts to write articles which are subjected to vigorous blogging.
Don’t worry: one day you might turn into a struggling site with advertisers swearing at you for dropping traffic. If you have any sense, at that point you move on to pastures new!
Lets have a punt , what is really is all about for Goldenberg is not the science or even AGW but a the need to get Obama reelected as presiden and keep the republicans out . Lets remember that Goldenberg is not a environmental journalists their in fact a political journalists first and foremost and part of the Washington circle and one whose main claim to fame is as the biography of Hilary Clinton. Big friend of the Clinton’s and a person who has never forgiven GW for winning the election. Now if St Gore winning would have been worse or better is a very good question.
So the attack on Heartland was really an attack on the republic party by the back door, given the seeming links between the two . An attacked to portray them as ‘anti-science’ and people who are happy to ‘poison childminder minds’ which was why it was the BS about education that got Goldenberg best efforts. All in the name of ‘a cause’ if not ‘the cause ‘
Chances of her or the Guardian admitting they got it dead wrong , zero , the Guardian itself have made it clear they are fully and blindly behind ‘the cause ‘ there more than happy to hand themselves over to Bob ‘fast fingers’ Ward for his purposes , while their recent articles of adoration of Mann’s book , had all the quality of love-struck teenager writing to the latest ‘boy-band ‘ about how much they love them.
While Goldenberg as a political journalist consider such smearing as normal practice just, in fact, part of the job were some you win and some you lose in the rough and tumble of political life and its only a question of how many times not if you stab someone in the back.
Why not record such interviews and immediately send them to competing papers?
Kurt in Switzerland says:
March 9, 2012 at 9:33 am
I think it would be better to give a measured reply in the future as well, but prefaced with some boilerplate about the Guardian’s obvious bias, its violation of its own journalistic standards and its disservice to its readers. But by all means, do complain to the UK Press Complaints Commission!
Kurt in Switzerland
Kurt, it will amuse you greatly to learn that the esteemed PCC has just announced it will shut down after being shown to be so completely useless at policing newspapers who were hacking phones with impunity, blagging emails with impunity and probably trailling people through gaining access to the GPS signals on their mobile phones.
You need to address things currently to Lord Justice Leveson, who is hosting a high profile enquiry into all this sleaze, which has already led to the removal of James Murdoch from his executive position at News International UK, may well lead to many trials of journalists from the now closed down News of the World and hopefully will lead to the premature retirement of senior police officers and public officials known to have taken financial bungs from Rebekah Wade, now Brooks, for information which really shouldn’t be in the public domain. One can but hope that Brooks will be declared persona non grata in the british media for life and that Rupert Murdoch’s future right to carry out any business in the UK is dependent on him putting up $5bn in an escrow account lodged in Zurich which will be handed over to UK plc to fund a school of ethical journalism through perpetual endowment, if he ever runs a newspaper, TV channel or website with hacking going on, directly or using 3rd parties, again.
If you type Leveson enquiry into Google, you will get an email address to sent your complaints to.
Trust me, it works…….
If you were being naughty, you could cc in Tom Watson MP, to see if he is equally scathing about bad journalistic practice on the left as he has been at News International……..
The Guardian is a left wing rag. Champaign socialists, ex public school, Oxford, Cambridge all fighting for justice and democracy. This means that the Guardian is allowed to cheat, lie, smear, slander, libel to achieve justice for all. I use to wonder how Hitler could get the German people to kill the Jews. Then you read this anti-Semitic hate filled rag with some of the vilest vindictive and spiteful little shits. It is just a little step for these guys.
as per previous comment(s) – the Guardian (and I’d suggest a good proportion of it’s readers) is somewhat perfunctory in it’s level of reporting and understanding. It is to be totally ignored and in my opinion is mostly full of dogmatic, uninformed, badly written and biased reporting.
I’d go so far as to suggest that ‘Taliban Today’ would provide a more educated and even handed outlet for news!
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
The Grauniad strikes out
Hardly a Big seller, and its sales are falling, 9 March 2012
Daily sales,
The Guardian : 215,988 ; -17.75 ( -5.99 ) NA
The Sun : 2,582,301 ; -8.38 ( -6.14 ) NA
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48913&c=1
Does the News of the Weird still have a topic for things that used to be weird, but no longer are?*
The reason I ask is lack of accountability, lack of integrity and lack of honest in the Main Stream Media is covered so much that it’s starting to have that “no longer news” feel about it.
I’m starting to get outrage immunity, or perhaps burnout over the failings of the MSM to pursue the truth or uphold its own ethical standards. Just as Post Normal Scientists no longer practice, the MSM no longer practices journalism. Both now practice advocacy. Both are also indoctrinated to believe they are performing the greater good and seem incapable of recognizing they are no longer performing their cores missions.
If others think they are also burned out over the topic of the hypocrisy and dishonest of the MSM, just wait. It’s an election year.
* BTW, yes it does: http://www.newsoftheweird.com/special/special.html.
I think you have responded exactly the way they wanted you to. You should instead beat your drum loud and hard and make them listen. You have enormous reader support to back you.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the Graun – it may not be around for too much longer – please read :
http://order-order.com/2011/08/03/data-journalism-guardian-style/
Harriet Harridan, so you have a Guardian ASBO – an Anti-Science Belief Order 🙂
Mike B says:
“The Grauniad is an embarrassment here in the UK. Its only readers are middle class yoghurt knitting bed wetters from London and it has always been an alarmist hard left wing rag”.
The Graun has been the major centre left newspaper here for nearly 2 centuries. It’s almost certainly read by all three major party leaders (our conservative Prime Minister is well to the left of his party). For that reason, if for no other, its opinions count.
Yes its environment coverage is pitiful, and the censorship and distortion is shocking. (You can have comments removed for merely mentioning WUWT or Climate Audit). But you don’t destroy the quality of a 190 year old institution overnight, however hard you try. There must still be journalists there who are disgusted by the activities of la Goldenberg, Hickman, Monbiot, Carrington and co. And “recommends” on the comments by the small number of sceptical readers who manage to escape the censorship on climate change threads demonstrate that sceptics outnumber warmists by about 4:1.
And Mike, as a long standing Guardian-reading London resident, I assure you that knitting your own yoghurt does not provoke diuresis.
There’s some sort of questionnaire from the Guardian which has been lying unread in my inbox for a few weeks now. I think after reading this I might get round to going and filling it in.
I am proud to say that I have been banned by the Guardian (climate comments sections) 8 times. I have since given up trying to comment. Come to think of it imagine all the others that have been banned. No wonder they will soon go bankrupt.
Interesting comments in the Youtube video of Molemann. I like to see “interesting” comments, wink, wink, nudge,nudge. Too many congratulatory comments for such a controversial “scientist.”
Regular readers who do not also visit Bishop Hill may also be interested in this incident
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/9/10/can-one-trust-the-guardian.html
where his eminence got to write a response to a typical hatchet job by a Mr Ward – who apparently is a scientist of the PR variety – in the Graun after suggesting he may ask the PCC and others to look at the reporting standards there.
Somewhat amazingly Mr Ward managed not only to be the first to comment on the response but managed to dash off a few detailed paragraphs within 2 minutes of the article appearing – something he could only have done if he knew about it in advance and had been passed it by the paper’s staff.
I’m in the target demographic of that paper – I’m in the UK, have left of centre leanings and voting habits (ok, I know that makes me just to the right of Stalin here but…) and I’m one of those professional and reasonably well paid types they tell their advertisers about. Yet I don’t read it and haven’t for 15 years now and probably won’t again before it dies.
Its a shame to see that place like the BBC basically sell its soul for a belief instead of taking the middle ground in any debate and presenting the facts. You can tell in the Beeb that there are people who are struggling to try, but the Graun never even lets them in.
Moving on…
The Guardian has a circulation of about 217,000 in the UK. The Green Party had a total vote of 285,000 in the last election. (Some of them must share their papers…more sustainable see). 30,000,000 votes were cast, 65% of the electorate. The guardian is an irrelevant rag. It doesn’t even deserve a capital letter