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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Media giant Rupert Murdoch has just purchased the National Geographic. According to the Washington Post, Murdoch has provided the non profit organisation with a desperately needed financial lifeline;
National Geographic gets financial lifeline from Fox in $725 million deal
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Under the terms announced Wednesday, Fox will control 73 percent of the operation, called National Geographic Partners, with the balance held by the National Geographic Society. The partnership, based in Washington, will include a portfolio of National Geographic-branded cable TV channels, digital properties and publishing operations, most notably the magazine that has advanced the society’s founding mission — “the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge.”
The agreement provides a financial lifeline not just for the much-honored magazine, but also for the National Geographic Society itself, the organization’s chief executive acknowledged Wednesday. Like many print publications, National Geographic has been hurt by the onset of the digital era, which has put it on a slow trajectory toward extinction.
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Not everybody is happy with the new owner. Despite firm assurances of continued editorial independence, some alarmists are worried that Murdoch’s climate skepticism will influence the way the foundation awards grants to scientists;
Climate change denier Rupert Murdoch just bought National Geographic, which gives grants to scientists
The National Geographic magazine has been a nonprofit publication since inception in 1888, but that ends today. The long-running American publication becomes very much for-profit under a $725 million dollar deal announced today with 21st Century Fox, the entertainment company controlled by the family of Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch is a notorious climate change denier, and his family’s Fox media empire is the world’s primary source of global warming misinformation. Which would be no big deal here, I guess, were it not for the fact that the National Geographic Society’s mission includes giving grants to scientists.
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Read more: http://boingboing.net/2015/09/09/rupert-murdoch-just-bought-nat.html
BoingBoing cites the following video, as evidence for Rupert Murdoch’s climate skepticism;
Given the alternative to Murdoch’s generous terms was probably bankruptcy, where nobody would get any grants, you have to wonder why some alarmists are taking such a negative view of Murdoch’s financial rescue package; After all, alarmists have long argued that the deluge of government money available to climate scientists who produce studies which support the views of politicians, has no influence on the content of the studies.
Maybe there’s a future for National Geographic. I’ve taken to mostly looking at the photos, still the best in the world, but I hate seeing “global warming” or “climate change” on nearly every article as if authors must demonstrate fealty in order to be published.
Consider the 11,000 or so published papers mentioning climate change in the Cook survey, a whopping 72 or so explicitly blamed human beings for global warming. The rest seem to have been “kissing the ring” (*).
* http://vatican.com/questions/113/kissing-the-popes-ring
I agree.Used to subscribe, but they lost me when the hysterics started..
Well I’m a Nikon person; not a Canon person.
So I don’t care, who owns National Geographic. They would never use any of my pictures anyway.
g
I got fed up with BoingBoing last year and said goodbye to it forever.
The most powerful thing the average person can do to voice their displeasure is to vote with their pocketbook. Don’t like the bow down to CC in your magazine, stop buying it. Don’t like the alarmism at the Weather Channel, don’t watch it. Don’t like when General Mills says they are going to fight CC by reducing their Co2 output, don’t buy their products. Don’t like the warmist lovefest at the Weather Underground, don’t go to their site. Don’t like Elon Musk riding the green subsidy gravy train, don’t patronize his companies.
The power of profits and money from consumers, clicks and eyeballs is very strong. If it’s not profitable to ride the Climate Change bandwagon, companies will find it difficult to continue to pursue that path. For the average person, this is the strongest voice they have. Most people are busy working and raising families and don’t have time to be an activist or write their representatives.
Murdoch’s just reliving his youth when the only publication out there that showed “boobs” was NG. It just ended up being run by boobs.
The “genteel ‘s” Playboy.
Also the pre-adolescent’s Playboy. And reprobate’s named Tom J.
Bunker Hill Jim
But for scientific boobs
Hand it to Scientific American IMO
Check out the photo in Gale, N.H. and Stos-Gale, Z. (1981) “Lead and silver in the ancient Aegean”. Sci. Amer. 244:142-152.
Photo on second page.
During the Victorian era a favorite family viewing public event was to see half naked native women on the stage illustrating how foreign ladies lived in the British Empire.
After all this time, back issue is pay walled.
I only read it for the articles.
I only look at it for photos of half naked native women.
Maybe I’ll take back my accusation that national geographic is getting like National Enquirer… We’ll see.
Another nail in the coffin of the glo.bull warming fraud !!!! The world is finally waking up from this nightmare !!
Awaiting moderation why ???? Is coffin a bad word ???
Marcus … ” f r a u d ” is one of the no-no words.
Testing the filter: “fr‍aud”=>”fraud”
Bout time NG moved away from photographs of African Titties, aka girls in aboriginal state, to something substantial.
Back in the day an Oxford Professor had meticulously measures African girls titties and came up with a theory that Global Human Warming was causing African girls titties to enlarge at enormous and uncontrollable rates.
Oh. The “Professor” … seems a ‘railroad engineer” from Calcutta who is hiding in a hospital from authorities in India.
Ha ha
Too bad! The National Geographic deserved to die. I was a subscriber for nearly 40 years, but it went totally over the cliff into warmist never-never land, and I cancelled it. It was no longer worth the money. Hadn’t been since the mid-90’s, actually.
If Murdoch had said “I’m going to run this thing the way it was back in the ’60’s and ’70’s”, then I’d cheer. But frankly, I hope the old coot fires everybody and turns the building into a condo.
Well, Murdoch could achieve a huge increase in circulation if he just starts being realistic and eliminates all the warmist fraudulent stuff. Subscription renewals or resumptions should be quite easy, as it once was a superb publication.
Glenn Reynolds has suggested that conservative groups ought to purchase “women’s interest” magazine publishers and then gently tweak the editorial slant from far-left to centrist-right, as being far more likely to change politics than spending a billion dollars on voter registration drives like Romney’s “ORCA” project. Especially since Romney’s “ORCA” completely melted down on election day and all that money was entirely wasted.
Same here. I’ll renew if I see 6 consecutive editions that don’t mention global warming. The photography really is remarkable.
Peter
I subscribed for years until their leftist ideology became too in-your-face. Also, I finally realized that many of my childhood nightmares came from viewing their stories on the Vietnam War. Maybe I’ll resubscribe for a few months and see how it is now.
National Geographic channel on Foxtel is becoming ever more warmist and therefore unwatchable. Let’s hope that changes soon.
I still occasionally watch a NatGeo or Nova special. I’ve just learned to turn off the last ten minutes or so.
“Now, how the study of the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy relates to the serious problem of catastrophic climate change.”
I subscribed to both Scientific American and NG until they started with the alarmism. I think it was NG that had a CGI cover picture of the Statue of Liberty up to its waist in sea water. I wanted to puke. But instead, I stopped subscribing, stopped buying the occasional copy at the news stand, and even stopped reading it at the barber shop.
Incidentally, my only source of smut was cut off…an unintended consequence.
That was the issue that caused me to drop my subscription as well.
Well you get fake pictures like that if you don’t use a Nikon camera.
g
Those who depended on grants to drum up phony global warming stories should be afraid. At the same time it is that type of story that has hurt the credibility of the magazine. There have been some very successful, very interesting, series on the tv channel. That should be profitable enough to sustain the company. I still don’t see how it is going to survive in a paper magazine format. If Murdoch can’t figure out how to keep it alive in the internet world, then it will die anyway.
I suspect subscriber drop-out from the disgusting barrage of “global warming” mentions was a factor in NG facing bankruptcy. Let’s pray the new owner does something about that as first order of business.
I read the magazine from cover-to-cover for years as a subscriber. I can’t even remember how long ago that was. Now, the only time I read it is in doctor’s offices waiting rooms (which is not very often for me). As soon as I come across the words “global warming” I put it down and pick up something more scientific and enlightening such as “Children’s Highlights” or “Lady’s Home Journal.”
Even “Women’s Weekly” becomes a saviour.. 😉
Even those aren’t safe bets any more, Stu. I’ve been reduced to reading and critiquing the local “Apartments for Rent” on those occasions when I foolishly neglected to bring a book.
I used to smuggle old copies of NG from the 40’s into doctors’ offices and hide them among the stacks of three year old women’s magazines.
Thanks, Eric Worrall.
Good!
This might save NatGeo. It became so biased it stinks.
The National Geographic has been nothing but a shill for the Global Warming, Climate Change Industry over the last few years, publishing more and more fiction and propaganda, becoming unwatchable and unreadable. Let’s hope things change or Murdoch is just throwing good money after bad.
Oh no, I’m being moderated, which words have dropped me in it?
[Sorry, no idea – mod]
Check your list – my company used to have “shill” on ours.
Whee! Confirmed. “s” “h” “i” “l” “l”.
Mr Murdoch, Sir I have a nice collection of NG’s at home cheap sir, $1,000,000 ( and they are starting to lean my place downwards on one end.).
I would like to believe this means that NG will abandon the eco-nut movement. But it depends whether Murdoch is still being blackmailed by Soros.
Think about it, if you are a wealthy skeptic of AGW, what media outlet would have more leverage on public perception to bring about a change of opinion?
I have heard my acquaintances use Nat Geo as a validation for their faith in climate change doom.
An effective way to overcome the MSM bias is to do as Murdoch has done – slowly but surely over time – the AGW meme will give way to at least a more open and balanced public exposure to both sides. Whether or not this will happen is still in the future. …any computer models to predict future public opinion on this topic?
How soon can Rupert Murdoch take over Nature magazine?! Biggest bunch of climate extremists on the planet, that bunch……
Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it! and commented:
Last time I looked, The Australian newspaper has been calling for action on global warming in its editorial since the late 1990s. News Corporation is a carbon neutral corporation as I recall
Murdoch tends to let the existing editors of publications he buys have a free hand. He’s explicitly promised that in this case. I doubt that there will be much change–maybe 10%.
I wonder how he thinks he can make money from Nat Geo, given that the big trend toward online material and against printed magazines (and against paying for digital subscriptions) is running so strongly against it.
Yes, he is a businessman. People underrate the importance of that when you are in the newspaper business.
Maybe Murdoch will oversee National Geographic’s “funeral” and then go on to establish something else less AGW-oriented.
Unless NG changes, there’s little reason to expect sales to change…..
Making money? He’ll make money. Consider that he now has rights to everything before they climbed onto the propaganda bandwagon. That is a very rich vein for mining.
I hope National Geographic is turned around. Even if it just vetoed the topic of global warming (under all it’s names) it would be a step forward, but I’m hoping for more, such a stand for sanity and common sense and plain good old fashioned science. If it is going to continue as is, it’d be better for it not to be rescued at all.
I grew up with NG in the family home, but I won’t touch it now, not even in the dentist’s waiting room. I do hope that $725 million is not wasted.
What about advertisers?
Well, if National Geographic was “on a slow trajectory toward extinction”, existing advertisers were suffering. Advertisers would do well out of a magazine with a good strong and factual science base. We’ve all lived with alarmism for 30 years, it’s time to step away from this nonsense and start looking at what is real and not not panic over what “might” or “could” happen if we don’t cave in to extreme demands.
There will always be advertisers. Those who don’t want to step away from green political correctness will find plenty of mags and papers supporting the meme. There are still plenty to choose from. Those advertisers who want to move into a new future and away from the old would welcome a change.
As it happens, I have subscribed to National Geographic since 1973 – and I do surely hope that “Murdoch’s climate scepticism will influence the way the foundation awards grants to scientists”.
I got a subsciption for the National geographic as a gift. They first copy was just obsessive climate extremism from cover to cover. I’ve not even bothered opening the rest and I will not ever accept another such gift let alone buy a copy.
After all, alarmists have long argued that the deluge of government money available to climate scientists who produce studies which support the views of politicians, has no influence on the content of the studies.
Well said!!
But what these snouts in the trough of the public-sector really hate is not CO2 but the private sector. Because “I hate CO2” is just another way of saying “I hate the private sector (… and particularly industry)”.
In common with many commenters here, I used to subscribe to the magazine. If Murdoch can clear out the propagandists, I might just buy it again. He might have problems doing that, not because anyone can stop him but simply because an alarmist culture seems to pervade almost everything in the magazine.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/the-decline-of-popular-science-journals/
Pointman
My thoughts exactly. I let my subscription lapse but I miss the old non-biased NG. I’ll be back if Murdoch can restore some realism to it’s pages. Here is hope. GK
What we have here I think is a classic case showing adherence to O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
I also was a subscriber for over 40 years and finally, I just could not support the constant barrage of alarmism. Will require for me longer than 6 issues to tell if he has managed to bring more balance to the current focus of the sky is falling routine.
I cancelled my subscription to National Geographic many years ago, because its content, including photography, became unbearably burdened with leftist ideology. Maybe its acquisition by Fox would result in providing less money to the alarmist crowd.
However, there’s a downside to Murdoch acquisitions. Since he bought Wall Street Journal, I cannot afford this uniquely reasonable newspaper, they want upwards from $400 per year, which is ridiculous. After all, there’s Web nowadays.
May I suggest that editorial content of the print magazine is not Murdoch’s priority.
His group earns its money from movies and TV.
in a world of ever more targeted television viewing he needs high-brow documentary content – Jersey Shore won’t sell Mercedes.
This is about the TV channels.
Yes, I think that is probably the case. even though we want this to be about ideals, it no doubt is only about profits.
It is definitely about the TV channels which is why the buyer is 21st Century Fox. 21st Century Fox is Murdoch’s movie and TV media company, while his print media is owned by his News Corp. company. Murdoch has had an ownership interest in the NatGeo cable channels dating back to 1997. This purchase just expands his ownership to 73% of all of National Geographic’s various media holdings (magazines, maps, TV, etc.).
As for grants, I doubt much will change. Murdoch bought a 73% interest in the “for-profit” media company, National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society, which dispenses the research grants, is still an independent non-profit. The Society not only owns a 27% stake in National Geographic Partners, but it just received $725 million from Fox to add to its endowment (and, no doubt, to continue promoting the global warming agenda).
For more info, see the NatGeo website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150909-21st-century-fox-media-partnership/
Maybe he will buy Scientific American too (-:
Just like many really bad movies go direct to video, Nat Geo should go direct to the dentists waiting room. Only ten are required to make a very effective door-stop.