Roger L. Simon writes on PJ Media:
Starting this year, PJ Media, in conjunction with our good friends at The New Criterion, will be awarding the first annual Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity.
Walter Duranty – it will be recalled — was the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent in the 1920s and 1930s who whitewashed Joseph Stalin’s forced mass starvation of the Ukrainians (the Holodomor) and many other aspects of Soviet oppression.
Duranty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his efforts.
Despite numerous attempts by Ukrainian organizations and others, the prize has never been revoked. Duranty’s photograph remains in its honored place on the New York Times’ wall along with the newspaper’s other Pulitzer winners.
The first annual Duranty Prize will be given for what our readers consider the most egregious example of dishonest reporting for the fiscal year 2011-2012 (July 1, 2011 – June 30, 2012).
We will be officially accepting nominations from PJM and TNC readers starting May 1, 2012, at Duranty@pjmedia.com (but if you want to go ahead now, no one’s going to stop you – the email address is functioning).
A Duranty Prize Committee of seven journalists and writers will then sift the nominations and decide the winner (or winners) to be announced at a ceremony in New York in the Fall.
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While I considered Dr. Michael Mann for his recent book contributions, it seemed inappropriate since this was about dishonest journalism, not delusional self-promotion.
That of course leaves Dr. Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute and his “Fakegate” crimes, duping reporters at Newspapers and other media (Guardian and BBC, plus Revkin at NYT for example) that should have known better, into reporting a trumped up story based on Gleick’s self admitted deception to steal documents from the Heartland Institute, plus a “fake” document, to give an otherwise mundane set of documents “legs” for a compliant press.
Leo Hickman, Suzanne Goldenberg, and company at the Guardian, plus Richard Black at the BBC thought they had a bona fide leak of incriminating information on the funding of climate skeptics by the Heartland Institute. Turns out they were played for fools by Gleick and when he was cornered by skeptics following the evidence, admitted to his phishing and dishonest impersonation to create a false news story, in a Huffington Post confession here.
I doing so, Gleick has broken both state and Federal Laws. I’m told that actions are pending.
Here’s a review of some salient points:
Some notes on the Heartland Leak
Notes on the faked Heartland document
If the sceptics’ conspiracy was real, why fake the evidence?
NCSE accepts Gleick’s resignation
Dr. Peter Gleick may have run afoul of a new cyber-impersonation law in California
Gleick removed from AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics page
Heartland Institute Releases Peter Gleick Emails Detailing Fraud, Identity Theft
Peter Gleick requests leave of absence from Pacific Institute
Koch takes the NYT and Revkin to task
Gleick declares in Mann’s book review (after phishing Heartland) – “there IS a war on”
Gleick and America’s Dumbest Criminals
Gleick and Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 1343
Gleick and the HP “Pretexting” Scandal
Gleick and the Watergate Burglars
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Given the uproar and that journalistic train wrecks Dr. Gleick has spawned with his dishonesty, and since he has played the role of science journalist in the past, writing for Forbes, Huffington Post, as well as other opinion pieces in science magazines and journals, I think he more than qualifies for the first annual Walter Duranty award.
For those that may think Gleick doesn’t qualifies as a journalist, I add this update from his Wikipedia Page, which shows him acting in that capacity:
Gleick is the editor of the biennial series on the state of the world’s water, called The World’s Water,[4] published by Island Press, Washington, D.C., regularly provides testimony to the United States Congress and state legislatures, and has published many scientific articles. He serves as a major source of information on water and climate issues for the media, and has been featured on CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, Fresh Air with Terry Gross [18], NPR, in articles in The New Yorker,[19] and many other outlets. He has also been featured in a wide range of water-related documentary films, including Jim Thebaut’s documentary “Running Dry”[20], Irena Salina‘s feature documentary Flow: For Love of Water,[21], accepted for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and and Jessica Yu and Elise Pearlstein’s 2011 feature documentary Last Call at the Oasis from Participant Media.[22] In 2010 his book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water was published by Island Press.[23] He served on the scientific advisory boards of Thirst, Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk, and other water-related films.
And let’s not forget his numerous articles on Forbes and Huffington Post.
As PJ Media says in their posting:
We will be officially accepting nominations from PJM and TNC readers starting May 1, 2012, at Duranty@pjmedia.com (but if you want to go ahead now, no one’s going to stop you – the email address is functioning).
I’ve sent in mine, WUWT readers are of course welcome to second that nomination.
h/t to WUWT reader Kelly Haughton
Well if you look at the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners, which includes Israeli and US war criminals, then you will get a grip of why these prizes exists. It is to legitimise the unlegitimisable. It is all part of the back-speak of our masters whose mendacity knows no bounds. And people swallow it. So why should they not do these things?
How about the New York Times itself?
Don Keiller says:
April 25, 2012 at 2:48 pm
They have filed a complaint. It isn’t up to them to file charges.
As for this award. As it’s for downright dishonest journalism, we can’t prove Black and others are dishonest, Gleik on the other hand has admitted to the dishonesty. OK, he’s not admitted to authoring the strategy memo but without it, the rest was a damp squib only confirming what was already known.
Has my nomination!
DaveE.
I don’t vote for idiots! oh, waite! lol~
YEAH. I’d go with William Connelley, since no one knows how long the deceit has gone on – or who he is. Maybe this deserves a thread and a vote, Anthony?
While I approve of the tactic of reducing things to absurdity, and getting people to laugh at the sorry situation we find ourselves in, we also need to face the deadly seriousness of the dangerous times we are living amidst.
Allow me to introduce the concept of the “éminence grise.”
This is the sly dude working behind the scenes to influence the mind or minds of the somewhat too-trusting person or people receiving advise. There are cases where the advisor is good and the advice is good, however the cases that stand out in history are usually the cases where the advice is bad, and in some cases treasonous.
In fiction a fine example of a bad “éminence grise” is Wormtongue, poisoning the mind of the king of the Rohan. It took a wizard like Gandalf to snap the king out of the evil enchantment he was under.
In English history there was this fellow named Sir Horace Wilson, who was in the position to buffer Chamberlain from hard facts he needed to face, and who worked to make sure Churchhill’s advice wasn’t heeded, or even heard. Wilson was the peace-loving Chamberlain’s “Wormtongue.”
We now live in a time where the media is jammed with lemmings who hardly can be called the cause of evil, for they are basically invertebrate copy-cats doing what they are told. The real “Wormtongues” are those who stand above the others, making extraordinary efforts to distort and pervert the Truth, (which is the essence of bad advice and evil.)
The real award we need is a “Wormtongue Award.”
A number of names pop into my head, the names of famous Environmental Writers and famous Climate Scientists, men who have lived plushly and spent lavishly and enjoyed all the fruits you earn when you sell your soul to the devil, but now face judgment days of various sorts.
However, as the “éminence grise” of the innocent American college student, (students naively looking for truth in all the wrong places,) I agree with Krazykiwi, and what he said April 25, 2012 at 12:57 pm.
Few have been the position to pervert and distort so much Truth, and have done so with such abject dedication, to the harm of so many young truth-seekers.
Therefore, for the first Wormtongue Award, I would like to nominate William Connolley.
How about a Piltdown Mann Award?
Seth Boringstein
Perfect nominee!
Peter Whale says:
April 25, 2012 at 12:04 pm
I always wondered who schnozzle Duranty was when I was a kid.
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You`re getting Duranty confused with Durante, Schnozzle Durante would be Jimmy Durante
To quote Jimmy “Everybody wants ta get inta the act!”,
Mmm… ‘burgers… smells like freedom!
See, I told you Gleick deserved a medal for his mendacity and bodacious exploits. Soon, they will be naming buildings after him. Afterwards, an appointment in Obama’s cabinet.
Bravo, Byron! I waded though all the comments intending to do what you did, if no one else beat me to it.
But you did it even better!
So,as the Great Schnozzolla himself would have but it, Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash….
But me no buts! That should be “put”.
I agree, Everybody wants to get inta the act.
I nominate Gleick and Revkin. What a team!! They are both smarter than most all of us about being smart and both dumber than a clod of dirt when it comes to real world issues. Hands down winners.
http://oxfordstudent.com/2012/04/18/climate-change-sceptics-call-on-oxford-to-cancel-lecture/
Oxford Newspaper admonishes Heartland for “plan to discredit climate science”
Thanks Byron I was confused. I now remember it was Jimmy.
Post and comments were replete with malaprops, it seems. Here’s another:
“climate research mendancy or at least scientific mendancy” (Rhoda R.)
That would be “mendacity”, thinks I.
Suzanne Goldenberg for her “work” in the Guardian. She supplies a regiular diet of misleading and frequently spiteful articles, almost always refusing to activate the “comments” section which would enable her egregious errors to be pointed out.
Damian Carrington, at the same newspaper, for his editorial “control” over the Environmental Section.
I should like to nominate Suzanne Goldenberg for her “work” in the Guardian. She has supplied a constant stream of biased, erroneous and spiteful articles, almost invariably refusing to turn on the comments to enable her errors to be corrected.
I say W M Connolley.
He’s done more damage and like various others is unrepentant and still making things slide sideways, even if via his trained successors. He got Tim Ball kicked off Wikipedia altogether, the neatest way of hiding the one professor who saw and stood up to the corruption right from the start and thus has unique historical material too. Thanks to support here at WUWT I replaced the page at Wikipedia under my own namespace. I smile to think I chose my user name long before I knew of the Climate Science corruption. I check regularly to ensure Tim Ball’s page is still there. And it could do with updating by anyone interested.
There’s Bob Ward too, insanely attacking Martin Durkin who produced the last major hope for getting sane climate science out to a wide audience.
There’s Al Gore who inflamed the world with a serially-misrepresenting popular film which hasn’t got a stitch of real truth in it.
There’s Iain Stewart and Brian Cox, hunky he-men to make the women swoon and forget that science has to be about uncertainties explored with rigour.
And many other eminence grises who set up the Revkins, Blacks, Higmans and Monbiots to respond with appropriate knee-jerk reactions.
In a funny way, compared with all the above, Gleick seems small fry and has already had a good roasting here. We had Moshpit of the Yard on his case, hours after the crime was committed, and the faithful baying hounds of WUWT for months afterwards.
Yeah, three awards.
Duranty Award for lying and corrupt journalism
Lysenko Award for lying and corrupt science
Wormtongue Award for corruption of primary info sources
And I’d nominate Ben Santer, David Suzuki and Maurice Strong along with WMC for the Wormtongue Award, and Pachauri and Bert Bolin along with Mann for the Lysenko Award.
Now OTOH, can we think up awards for the polar opposites of the above? What journalist do we know who risked life and limb to expose some heinous corruption? In my locality there was Jill Dando… But hey, we have Anthony Watts right here… Or perhaps John Daly would be a fitting nameholder for this award… And what scientist do we know, ditto, from our times rather than Galileo or Bruno? in my books Tim Ball comes close… And what individual do we know who paid the price for standing up to primary corruption? There was Irene Sendler who helped Jews escape, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but lost out to Al Gore…
Certainly it would be more efficient to just hand out awards for good journalism to the remaining handful of reporters that are honest and impartial.
I thing Gleick belongs in Lenin’s category of “useful idiots”, and we shall see what happens in due course in the courts, but as soon as I think of Black, I think of the whole BBC. It is riddled with the AGW concept, top to bottom, side to side.
Do you know, in England at present we have an officially declared drought, yet it has rained solid for a week, and there are numerous flood warnings “.
Seriously folks you couldn’t make it up. yet despite all this, last night the BBC was showing those brave idiots rowing to the North Pole, (sorry the north magnetic pole), oh wait a minute (the north magnetic pole’s position many years ago), and they were blocked by ice programme.
So for me, this continual drip drip drip of biased programming from the BBC is well up there for its cumulative effect on our whole population.
Yes, and no. Since Gleick himself categorizes himself as a journalist, he qualifies for nomination. Since his acts were not only damaging and dishonest but illegal as well, he climbs quickly to the top of the nominee list.
However, this is a Pajamas Media “Award” not restricted to climate alarmists so he’ll have very tough competition with the likes of Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman (to name just two).