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.
For those of you wondering what a grauniad is.
http://www.grauniad.co.uk
Rhys Jaggar says:
“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.”
True, and also that Delingpole’s items re Climate Change are only ever allowed as blogs and do not appear in the main paper, whilst Lean and Louise Gray (Environmental Correspondent or more accurately Green Parrot) get prime space …
I realise Rhys is making a general point, but to be clear in the thread context, that’s the Daily Telegraph, not the Guardian.
Since they engage in wholesale tax evasion, its interesting to see the guardians attitude to comments on this.
Any article on taxation and evasion, comments are disabled.
They don’t like people pointing out the hypocrisy.
When it was the Manchester Guardian, the Grauniad was almost a newspaper. Left of centre, yes but it wasn’t as bad as now and was widely read, despite the anagrams. (Ian Hislop used to refer to that well known anagram,)
My father took both the Grauniad and the Telegraph and I think the FT but my memory is poor on that. (It was 45 years ago!)
DaveE.
– Anyone going to telephone the ASA ?
the Guardian’s new three little pigs TV advert…states that they give the full story
, but fails to mention that the environment department is exempt from that rule & the editorial code (I see pieces with the pejorative “denier” in when they swore not to use it anymore)
I see a number of people have suggested who I could complain to next in the Guardian “Carletongate” affair. However, I have found complaining to press councils and politicians usually accomplishes little as they do their best to do nothing and just protect their friends.
I wonder if it is a better use of time to work, as Anthony does so well, to simply discredit the Guardian and similar propagandistic rags. After all, if, eventually, almost no one takes what they say seriously about environment, energy, etc., then what they say won’t matter any more than what the drunk down the street says.
“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.”
Guardian is longer have soul. Guardian is have Marxism, instead! Much better than have soul.
@ur momisugly Jones and @ur momisugly Jimbo,
Glad to read I’m not the only one regularly banned 😀
For those outside the UK who wonder how a newspaper with such a tiny circulation can have such a huge effect on UK politics, this site: http://guardianlies.com/ is a *must* read. It gives the story of how the Guardian Editor and senior journalists lied under oath in order to discredit the John Major led Conservatives in the “Cash for Questions” row. The whole affair seems absolutely quaint in comparison with this and the last governments’ embezzlement, but it was a huge story at the time which directly led to Tony B-liar being elected.
Just think. If they hadn’t lied then possibly there would have been: No “sexed up” war documents (and thus possibly no Iraq war), no £squillion debt to be paid by the as yet unborn, no loony AGW policies, and no disastrous expansion of the state.
But don’t repeat this on the G’s site: You will be banned :-).
Anthony,
Re: Your final words in your article
If there is any similarity with Oz, I would share your doubts. Our national broadcaster, the ABC, has an official complaints process in a claimed autonomous department; Audience and Consumer Affairs. (A&CA). Furthermore, they are compelled to respond to all complaints. Additionally, there is the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), a totally separate government authority, for appeals if complaints are not upheld by the ABC.
ABC radio’s flagship The “Science Show” has long displayed extreme bias, including for example twenty or more pro CAGW stories in a year, but NONE from the other side. I’ve made eight formal complaints to A&CA, on what I thought were the most outrageous, and to my amazement, all 8 were rejected.
One in particular contained five examples of very misleading claims, that I felt could not be dismissed as subjective or a matter of opinion. But, again, to my amazement, the ACMA basically ruled that these scientific facts were opinion rather than objective facts, and anyway it was not a requirement that the “Science Show” be accurate, as long as other shows on “the platform” such as different audience appeal “current affairs” had adequate balancing material. (which they did not).
Here follows a draft article on that complaint ruling, a process that has taken over a year:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/abc-radios-so-called-science-show-licence-to-mislead-the-public/
First comes lie then big lie after that comes stats and then Guardian or other newspaper.
As far as British newspapers go, I am partial to the Sun. Particularly impressive are the articles on Page 3.
OK, that was just plain snarky. I DO enjoy articles in the Telegraph, though. And I read Page 3 for the cartoons!
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Anthony says:
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.
__________________________
Good call Anthony.
One of the dirty little tactics commonly used by acolytes of the “Cause” is to slime someone in the media, and then either deny them a chance for rebuttal (done to me in ~2002 by the Globe and Mail – “Canada’s National Watermelon Paper”) or to delay rebuttals interminably, while widely circulating the warmist lies (done to Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon by Eos in ~2003).
By independently publishing your replies online with no delay, you effectively neuter their slimy little tactic, and also give these dishonest rags the “respect” they deserve.
Anthony, no journalist will agree to publishing your comments in full and unedited. For a start, the journalist is not the sub-editor and has no control over how much of the article makes it into print or how it is edited. So you may as well leave that demand out of your policy – or preferably recast it as a demand that your comments not be distorted or misrepresented.
Anthony,
Don’t go there with the press commission complaints. One of the glories of this country is our unique First Amendment rights. Let them blather and bloviate all they want. We can refute them with logic, science and reason. And this blog does that daily. If they truly cross the line, there is recourse in the libel laws. But we don’t need government commissions regulating our press (or our blogs).
It’s not often that the Guardian apologises or correct stories but I’ve listed five times when it did so on my blog. Admittedly none are environmental issues. What it does show is that even on major stories it still has an agenda which is not to tell the truth.
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/guardian-gets-it-wrong-five-times/
Their current TV advert:
I thought it was funny. A national newspaper obsessed with reporting, and its readership obsessed with discussing, fairy stories!
Now, I admit that I have long hair, a beard, am partial to the occasional alternative cigarette and (possibly worst of all) am a vegetarian, and thus would undoubtedly qualify as a communist hippy in the view of at least one of Mr Watt’s regular posters. Oh, and I like yoghurt as well but have to admit that I can’t knit.
But, come on chaps, some of us read the grauniad (on t’internet anyway) for pure amusement. What’s not to love, for example, about the Moonbat’s insane ramblings, week after week (not to mention the comments of his acolytes), or Andrew Simms’ … ahem … fantastic series, 100 months to Save the Planet, which seems to have dropped that tagline, presumably when even he realised that the planet didn’t need saving, certainly not by him.
Along with previous posters, I too have had comments excised for failing to say the right (or, to be strictly accurate, the left) thing but I hold that as a badge of honour, as should everyone in the same position. The beauty of reading it on-line, of course, is that it won’t cost you a penny but can give endless hours of entertainment. It’s financial position, notwithstanding its dubious use of tax havens, means that it may not survive for much longer, so I urge everyone to drop in for a few minutes while you still can.
Writing in to get the Guardian, BBC or ABC (Oz) to report complaints is about as optimistic as writing to Pravda in 1950 to suggest that the gulag program was inappropriate.
The Grauniad, as their typesetters used to put, has always been a left wing wooly liberal broadsheet. Their spelling may have improved but little else.
I have found that the quickest way to get banned from The Guardian, is to use facts, to quash a debate with a commentator with a BLUE C (contributor)
RealClimate is part of The Guardian Environmental Network, and with the nasty comments against skeptics, they sound just like the climategate emails, and the the moderator answers in the realclimate blog, and wonder if they actually take part in the comments section of the paper.
It could be Gavin himself telling you, you are a moron.
for more bias and lies
see the ABC radio national (NON) science show of sat 1th march
accusations against everyone they can
support of gliek
and moonbat saying fuku outcomes good.
as the truth about contaminated areas is finally hiting msm
– I still think the strongest claim is going to the Advertising Standards Authority re the TV ad claiming they give the full story, if you can gather examples (not too difficult) of the environment pages not giving the full story. The ASA has been quite hawkish recently in drawing the line in advertising claims.
May I suggest that as a matter of policy you immediately publish after you have posted your replies and ask other bloggers to re-post on their websites. This way if you feel a complaint is warranted then it’s clear for all to see.
P.S. Post the complaint here also.
Alas, such low standards of behaviour are not unusual in the UK media. Like many others, I too feel sad when I see what The Guardian has become. It was one of only three national newspapers in the UK that I ever bought. This is ironic to many British readers because Guardian reporter Nick Davies is currently a star in the British media firmament. Davies recently won awards for his role in exposing crimes committed by reporters working for Rupert Murdoch [Murdoch is the media Baron behind Fox in the United States]. The exposure forced Murdoch to close The News of the World, a British newspaper of 168 years standing. I fear that having Nick Davies on the books has given the The Guardian an inflated opinion of it’s own self worth and integrity.
There is however, another person at The Guardian who I respect enormously. His name is Ben Goldacre and he writes a regular column called “Bad Science”. The scourge of fakes, quacks, charlatans and snake oil salesmen, he is practising physician and one of the finest writers on medical and health issues [but I do not know if he has ever written about the AGW issue]. He has a book by the same name which is worth every penny, though US readers will probably be unfamiliar with the names of the hokey people and institutions that attract his attention. The irony of this story is almost cruel, because Ben Goldacre has often written about the pathetic state of science education among mainstream journalists.
Basking in Goldacre’s aura, it would be easy for a bog-standard environment correspondent to award themselves an extra couple of dozen IQ points.
– When I think about it, the Guardian Enviroment section have themselves a nice little niche in supplying climate porn. The bogus stories come in daily straight off green activists press releases, so their reporters just sit in an office & just reprint it without altering any of the loaded words & emotional tricks and add a commentary, keeping the difficult parts in quotes to cover themselves legally.
– The “true believer” readers get their daily fix “ooh look, the glacier is melting there, the waters rising there”..”I feel good my dogma is confirmed” etc.
…Yeh, right, but we know they never come back in 3 months to see it full. (And the comments are switched off or censored to keep out difficult questions that threaten the narrative)
– In their parallel universe the Australia drought never ended Tim Flannery has been knighted for the forethought of getting desalination plants built.
-If the Guardian stops taking these stories at face-value,
1. The reporters would have to do some real work of fact checking “oh the Island isn’t going to be swamped by sea level rise” etc.
2. They won’t have any stories left to print
3. they won’t have their marketing niche anymore.
– Green activists have most of the big media sewn up The BBC & Guardian Enviroment sections & New Sci-activist are not interested in truth, as well as the niche it’s too complicated for the simplistic narrative they want to portray. However now that skeptical science has the biggest audience in blogs & books why not reach out into the other media formats like a regular Realist Podcast & maybe web TV ? Now you’ve got audience you’ll get the advertisers, although the activists will try their undemocratic bullying tactics to intimidate.