From the Heartland Institute. Her’s a case where the alarmist side of the debate automatically seems to think it is “big oil” central, until such time they have to admit to their mistakes.
Washington Post Corrects Lies About Heartland Institute, Prints Rebuttal
Guest post by Jim Lakely*
A week or so ago, The Washington Post ran an err0r-filled, old-news hit piece against The Heartland Institute titled, “Climate skeptic group works to reverse renewable energy mandates.” Reporter Juliet Eilperin and I exchanged a few emails several days before the story ran, yet she somehow managed to print this lie:
The Heartland Institute received more than $7.3 million from Exxon Mobil between 1998 and 2010, and nearly $14.4 million between 1986 and 2010 from foundations affiliated with Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch.
Eilperin was only off by a factor of 10 regarding Exxon (putting aside Heartland hasn’t received a dime from Exxon since 2006), and off by a factor of at 400 regarding the Kochs. (Our first gift from them in a decade was $25,000 for health care work, not climate).
I say “somehow,” but I know where she got it: from the lies printed at DeSmog Blog. In fact, it was at least a double fail on Eilperin’s part. She grabbed a lie wrapped in a mistake, and printed that as fact — without even calling or emailing me to ask if, say, it’s true that Heartland has been the beneficiary of some $21 million from Exxon and the Kochs in the last decade or so.
That’s a pretty significant sum of money, no? Perhaps something a reporter might check — or an editor might insist be checked. Alas, for The Washington Post — as it is for all of the corrupt mainstream media — the idea that Heartland is lighting cigars with endless hundred dollar bills from “Big Oil” is a “fact” too good to check.
The Post did correct its story, but it was too late for the purpose of truth and responsible reporting. The lies and errors are now permanent online, and were repeated in papers around the world. (The Boston Globe ran the uncorrected story on December 2, one week after a “correction” moved over the Post’s wire service. Funny how that happened.)
The unbearable embarrassment of The Washington Post publishing a correction and rebuttal written by The Heartland Institute could have all been avoided with a simple email, phone call, or text from Eilperin to me — a contact within an organization that has never gotten a fair shake from the MSM, but a contact who will freely and honestly communicate with any reporter.
It’s not easy to resist the temptation to tell the MSM to pound sand, but I used to work among them. So I still deal with the MSM on honest terms: I don’t lie, so I expect the same — not sympathetic coverage, but honest reporting. Sadly (for our republic), that is not the standard of today’s MSM. (Full disclosure: Juliet Eilperin expressed her deepest apologies to me for screwing up, for what that’s worth.)
That’s enough background. Here’s the unedited letter from Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast, submitted to The Washington Post and published (almost in its entirety) in their newspaper on December 1. Any references to Al Gore, I was told by The Post, were removed for “space reasons”:
They say truth is the first casualty of war. In the war of words over global warming (aka “climate change”) that is plainly the case.
Last week the Washington Post ran a news article that falsely claimed my organization, The Heartland Institute, received millions of dollars from Exxon Mobil and foundations affiliated with Charles G. and David H. Koch [“Climate skeptic group works to reverse renewable energy mandates,” by Juliet Eilperin, Nov. 24].
Not true. ExxonMobil over the course of a decade gave less than a tenth of the amount reported, never amounting to even 5 percent of our annual receipts. The reported level of support from the Kochs was even more egregiously wrong: Except for a gift of $25,000 last year for our work on health care reform, the Kochs hadn’t donated a dime since 1998.
The Washington Post ran a correction on its web site, but the damage was done. The article has been reprinted without correction in scores and perhaps hundreds of newspapers throughout the country. It adds to the false narrative that the only persons and organizations that question the dogma of man-made global warming are shills for the oil industry.
We aren’t. We have more than 5,000 donors, receive only a small fraction of our support from the fossil fuel industry (and always have), and we work with hundreds of highly qualified scientists to simply speak the truth about climate change.
Where do we go to get our reputation back?
The article misrepresented our work as well as our funding. The Heartland Institute is not “critical of climate change science.” We are one of its leading supporters, having hosted seven international conferences (with an eighth one taking place in Munich this week) and published a comprehensive survey of the scientific literature in two volumes, with a third volume on its way.
We spend more supporting climate science than all but a handful of public policy think tanks.
Eilperin reports we ran a billboard “comparing those who believe in global warming to domestic terrorist Theodore J. Kaczynski.” Also untrue. The billboard simply reported the fact that the infamous Unabomber still believes in man-made global warming, despite the mounting scientific case against it, and asked viewers if they do, too. If you doubt the veracity of the billboard, just Google “Al Gore and the Unabomber” and take a quiz to see if you can tell their positions on global warming apart.
It’s been a long time since the Washington Post ran an article that was anything other than dismissive or worse on the efforts of sincere and hard-working scientists and organizations that say the case hasn’t been made that man-made global warming is a threat to either public health or the environment. That’s a disservice to the newspaper’s readers, and because of the paper’s stature, to the nation.
Joseph L. Bast is president of The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit organization based in Chicago, Illinois.
* Only the section of the post in italics above was written by Bast, the remainder in Jim Lakely. The attribution in the header has been corrected.
wte9 says:
December 5, 2012 at 9:48 am
“His response letter would have been more effective if it had left out the Unabomber part.”
But it was the WaPo that brought it up in the first place. According to Bast: “Eilperin reports we ran a billboard “comparing those who believe in global warming to domestic terrorist Theodore J. Kaczynski.” So Eilperin wrote it, and Bast is left to try and extricate himself from it.
It seems that AGW is the issue by which you can tell the professionalism and integrity of an organisation. WaPo is just another organisation (including BBC, ABC, CBC, Time, the Economist etc) that gets things so wrong, routinely, that you are left wondering about the quality and truthfulness of the rest of its output. 28gate revealed that the BBC is biased, that the bias is corporate wide and endorsed by the senior managers at the Beeb.
Et tu WaPo?
Its no wonder the MSM is losing its constituency and its relevance.
Any reason why Ms Eilperin would not post here to defend her position?
Or to put it another way:
“Ms Eilperin, would you like to respond?”
Hello??
It should be demanded that she write to all the subsequent publishers of the erroneous article to ensure they publish with it the apology in full with a copy of the letter from Heartland in full. If she is sincere in her apology, this should be the very least she can do.
To Leftists, once a lie is told, it becomes truth.
Welcome to 1984.
RHS says:
December 5, 2012 at 7:26 am
I can’t wait for Greenpeace and WWF to disclose how much oil money they get so they can be accused of being paid shills for the oil companys.
_____________________________
Gail Combs says:
That is easy just go to ActivistCash and start looking at what foundations donate to who.
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I posted this on the WeatherZone (Aus) forum about a month ago;
http://forum.weatherzone.com.au/ubbthreads.php/topics/1140397/Re_The_Climate_Change_Politics#Post1140397
There’s a further post 2 under this one.
Most people I speak to about the CAGW scare simply don’t believe it. No matter how much scientists, activists and journalists babble on about science being non-debatable and that people must be manipulated to accept their message, the average person who has the time to think about the CAGW fiction just rejects it and gets on with trying to live their lives.
The fact that newspapers persistently write scare stories about something which people disbelieve only serves to reduce the credibility of all news output. If the Washington Post had the courage to do the politically unthinkable and write balanced stories about climate science, challenging the scare and exposing the inept, flawed and dishonest science behind it they might find their circulation increasing instead of falling by 7.84% as it did last year.
http://accessabc.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/the-top-u-s-newspapers-for-march-2012/
It starts in in the journalism schools where students are indoctrinated and equipped with all the tools needed to further the agenda, somehow missing out on the ethics of the profession. It is reinforced in the offices and halls of outlets such as the WaPo, NYT, and LAT where these “journalists” learn that anything that furthers the agenda is OK, including making up “facts,” parroting the lies of others, and avoidance of real investigative journalism.
Media outlets have always been liberal, but sometime in the last thirty years, they passed from sympathy to out and out advocacy. In doing so they contribute more than their share to our rapid decline.
If only! The problem is that their shrinking audience is increasingly liberal, and as a result, the MSM would lose circulation if they stepped on their touchy toes. Look what happened when PBS gave Anthony a fair shake, or when the BBC once gave a balanced report on something, etc. The believers make an almighty stink. The MSM is terrified of offending them.
The situation is made more difficult for the MSM by the complicated nature of the controversy. Rebutting or cutting down to size many warmist assertions requires lots of space and many thrusts and parries–and the MSM doesn’t have the space or expertise to do so. It’s easier not to inflame the mob.
When the “mistakes” go the same (ideological) direction almost every time, they aren’t mistakes.
Almost anything else I could think to say with regards to the “profession” of “journalism” would never make it past the mods.
They do this to everyone, all the time. It’s the *norm*, an honest journalist is far and away the exception.
Noblesse Oblige says:
December 5, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Media outlets have always been liberal, but sometime in the last thirty years, they passed from sympathy to out and out advocacy. In doing so they contribute more than their share to our rapid decline.
The difference is not the time, it’s that people have other sources of information to compare them to.
They were just as dishonest 30 years ago, if perhaps a tiny bit more subtle.
References to Al Gore removed “for space reasons”?
Censorship has many, many guises…
Here are her columns when Juliet Eilperin wrote for the Huffington Post. Standard issued leftist claptrap. Her mother works/ed for Committee for Concerned Scientist.
“Juliet Eilperin expressed her deepest apologies to me for screwing up, for what that’s worth.”
It’s not worth a damn thing. She’s just sorry she got caught, and will be happy to lie again, hoping she can get away with it next time. >:-(
The only way to make the likes of the grubby Juliet Eilperin truly repentant is to take away a large chunk of their money … talk is cheap, taking their money hurts. Sue Eilperin and the Washington Post for a ‘motza’ (Aussie term) and their bleating as a consequence will correct the indifference of the MSM to reporting truth over the CAGW industry lies and deceipt.
” Those numbers represent donations to all the organizations that co-sponsored the institute’s climate conference in May 2012. ”
that’s a retraction? looks like an amplification to me.
deepest apologies from somebody who’s shallow to the bone… for screwing up by not revealing the huge army of well funded klimate kaffirs…
she’s saying it’s worse than she thought – hardly an apology. she obviously thinks everybody is stupid.
wte9 says:
December 5, 2012 at 9:48 am
ls
“His response letter would have been more effective if it had left out the Unabomber part.”
I was gonna suggest a billboard of Kaczynsk reading the Washington Post, but I guess not now.
Journalistic Integrity is no longer the MSM goal. “The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. … The real arena is corrupt and bloody.” – Saul Alinsky
It never ceases to amaze me how many people do not have the foggiest idea about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group
Hiding in plain sight helps, I suppose. Her boss definitely attends, maybe those lower down the food chain also on occasion.
Hilarious really when you look at the big picture. Here we have an example of the news media deciding to print a pack of lies because it suits the political line it wants to take. The MSM haven’t realised that the existence of the internet means the game is up – the lies do not lie uncovered they are immediately exposed on the internet. As a result people start to realise that the MSM is lying to them. They think “Why should I waste my time and money buying a newspaper that is just telling me lies?”. No reason at all is there?
So the decline of the MSM is assured. People only have to realise they have been lied to once for them to think “Why am I wasting a dime on this fantasy rag?”. It doesn’t have to be a lie about climate change. Every time they tell a lie to support their own position they dig their own grave, just as the Independent and the Guardian are digging their own graves here in the UK.
Ryan says:
Hilarious really when you look at the big picture. Here we have an example of the news media deciding to print a pack of lies because it suits the political line it wants to take. The MSM haven’t realised that the existence of the internet means the game is up – the lies do not lie uncovered they are immediately exposed on the internet.
No, I think they realize it, and they’re working in concert with the UN and national governments to find more ways to stifle the dissent by controlling the internet.
Has anyone else noticed that the MSM has been keeping very quiet about Al Gore? It seems the only time he gets any mention is when he makes statements intended for the press. And alarmists seem do everything they can to not say his name, and when his name is brought up they get extremely perturbed and do everything they can to shut the discussion down, or change the subject. I post a great deal in the usenet newsgroup alt.global-warming and you can get an easy reaction by simply saying Al Gores name. They get positively childish in their vituperative reactions. My guess is that Al Gore has done his thing with his powerpoint presentation and is now working diligently and quietly in DC with the Democrats in power to funnel as much tax money as humanly possible towards the agw nonsense, ie. his alternative energy and green investment cronies (including himself) and the United Nations. We need to ferret him out and examine what he’s up to. We ought not to ignore the fox in the hen house, regardless of how quiet he is.