This is why media coverage of climate debate has been corrupted

Josh_greens_go_by_airUN and Oxfam caught bribing media to write crusading climate stories

By Ian Wishart

News journalists are being bribed by the United Nations and the Oxfam charity to write scare stories about climate change ahead of the global climate treaty negotiations in Paris later this year.

Details of the bribes – which take the form of ego-boosting “awards”, global travel in CO2 generating airliners and financial payments – are contained in a news release just published by the UNDP today, an organisation headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Journalists’ codes of ethics prohibit being induced to give favourable coverage, but those rules have increasingly been ignored in recent years by the use of backdoor mechanisms like funding journalism “awards” as a means of generating content and rewarding propaganda-writers.

New Zealand’s major media, like the TV3 network, have frequently covered climate stories in the Pacific with the financial “assistance” of lobby groups like Oxfam and Greenpeace.

The full text of the news release follows:

15 September 2015 – Oxfam will support the Voice2Paris  global storytelling contest launched in August by the United National Development Programme (UNDP) by providing three additional fellowships for participating journalists to cover the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP21, in Paris in December. Oxfam’s contribution to the contest aims at encouraging journalists’ participation in climate change reporting and raising public awareness of climate actions.

“The contest is a fantastic opportunity to create awareness of the harmful impacts of climate change on communities, and of potential opportunities in climate-vulnerable developing countries. This is also a great opportunity for young journalists to strengthen their perception of climate change and to frame it not merely as an environmental issue but also as an issue of social justice and poverty alleviation” said Wang Binbin, Manager of the Climate Change and Poverty Team, Oxfam Hong Kong.

The storytelling contest targets writers 35 years and under from developing countries who want to contribute ­– locally and internationally – towards greater public awareness of climate change…

Read more: http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/17255/un-and-oxfam-caught-bribing-journalists-to-write-climate-change-scare-stories/

[disclosure: Ian Wishart is the author of climate change books Air Con and Totalitaria, but has not sought or accepted payment from lobbyists]

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Latitude
September 15, 2015 10:37 am

the biggest scam was allowing a country to define itself as “developing”….
…then vote if they got paid

September 15, 2015 10:51 am

Ian Wishart wrote,
“News journalists are being bribed by the United Nations and the Oxfam charity to write scare stories about climate change ahead of the global climate treaty negotiations in Paris later this year.”

Well, here in quotes is my scare story about climate change. I just made it up; that being an epistemological basis used in scare stories that the UN and the Oxfam charity are bribing people to write.

“A young girl and boy decided to change the world. One decided to promote the collectivization of human wealth above a ‘fair’ amount for each person and use it to control humanity in the name of climate. The other decided to create the first permanent extraterrestrial colonies to be politically and economically independent of Earth by using only the private sector to create them. The former became a crusading journalist with a sociology degree, the later became an pioneering investment capitalist with an engineering degree.
Their dreams clashed; each tried to stop the other. Then journalist asked for the UN’s help to achieve her goals.
There a lot of privacy regarding what the pioneering investment capitalist is doing, because it is private.”
{above quoted story written by John Whitman}

Will I be offered a bribe from the UN or the Oxfam charity for my story? They can email me via the ‘Contact Me’ tool at my website.
John

ferd berple
September 15, 2015 10:57 am

Oxfam spends 25% of its funds on wages and running costs
Oxfam’s income flows in from governments around the world, including £45.9milion from UK taxpayers.
the charity paid seven of its most senior bosses a combined £700,000 plus benefits such as contributions towards private school fees for up to three children. It has also subsidised the personal tax bills of some highly paid executives on the basis they live in countries with ‘high tax rates’.
maybe if oxfam wasn’t taking such a big cut from governments, the taxes would be lower?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193050/Oxfam-spends-25-funds-wages-running-costs-Charity-spent-103m-year-including-700-000-bonuses-senior-staff.html#ixzz3lpaom5Vj

Reply to  ferd berple
September 15, 2015 11:54 am

When I worked for Oxfam fifty years ago, they spent 11% of income on running costs and 4% on fund raising. The remaining 85% went on aid. Obviously many things have deteriorated in Oxford since then.

Reply to  arthurpeacock
September 15, 2015 12:01 pm

Or it might have been 4% on running costs and 11% on fund raising – not sure now. The 85% is correct though.

Gamecock
September 15, 2015 11:44 am

Capitalism must die! UN and Oxfam bribes are fine if they lead to the death of capitalism. That is what the Paris meeting will be about.
“Journalists’ codes of ethics”
Cirrusly?

g
September 15, 2015 11:50 am

SHAME !!!

September 15, 2015 12:30 pm

“Oxfam will support … storytelling”
Sound pretty accurate. The telling of tall stories is rewarded.

David A
Reply to  Tony
September 15, 2015 1:17 pm

The taller the tale, the bigger the first place reward. Journalists (proprgandist) jumping higher, diving deeper, coming out drier then ever before,

Resourceguy
September 15, 2015 12:40 pm

Here is updated terminology for our times. Runaway Climate Change Scare Tactics in a Post-enlightened Science Era.

September 15, 2015 1:12 pm

I replied to “Climate Watch” on another thread, but that comment fits better here:
Climate Watch says:
… your presupposed conclusion that climate change is a fabrication…
What does that even mean? The climate has always changed. Please explain more clearly what you’re trying to say.
You also say that CO2 correlates with the Industrial Revolution. No argument there. But there’s a problem with the IPCC’s contention that changes in CO2 cause changes in global temperature. There is no evidence for that.
There is plenty of evidence showing that ∆T causes subsequent changes in ∆CO2. There is lots of data showing that happens, on time scales from months, to hundreds of thousands of years. But I cannot find any data showing that ∆T is caused by ∆CO2 (other than a very rare one-off coincidence).
The IPCC’s basic premise was wrong, so no wonder its conclusions are wrong, and why it cannot make consistent, correct predictions.
Next, you write:
I am honestly asking people to point me toward research done to show that the irrefutable addition of greenhouse gases by humans could occur and have no impact on climate…
That is asking folks to prove a negative. The best I can do is point you to the climate Null Hypothesis, which has never been falsified. It states that if no measurable or observed changes occur, then the alternate hypothesis (in this case, the conjecture that CO2 causes dangerous global warming) is falsified.
You also say that computer models demonstrate that introducing higher CO2 levels into the atmosphere will impact climate. But it hasn’t. The models were wrong. There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening; everything we observe now has happened in the past, and to a greater degree. Furthermore, CO2 levels have been more than 15X higher in the past, without ever triggering runaway global warming — or really, any global warming. That’s because almost all of the warming effect from CO2 takes place within the first few dozen ppm. At current concentrations of ≈400 ppm, any CO2 induced warming is too minuscule to measure.
Not one alarming climate prediction has come true. If someone was trying to convince you of something and used numerous failed predictions to make their case, wouldn’t you begin to doubt what they were telling you?
That’s just what’s happening. Even a few years ago, when there was an article in the major media about AGW, reader comments under the article contained many posts that expressed concern.
But no more. Now, most comments ridicule the man-made global warming scare. It’s because the IPCC and their side of the debate have cried “WOLF!!” for too long, and too often. The public is starting to reject their false alarm. And once they lose the public, they will never get them back.
The “dangerous man-made global warming” scare is based primarily on measurement-free assertions, and on peer reviewed papers, which the Climategate email leak showed are tightly controlled by a small clique of gate-keepers, and most of all, it is being propped up by the immense piles of money supporting the climate alarmist narrative — more than $100 billion to date, and that’s just in the U.S.
The goal is ‘carbon’ taxes, not science. If CO2 emissions can be taxed, that would generate a huge flow of money to the government, since just about every industrial process emits CO2.
But the downside is that we citizens will be forced to pay for those carbon taxes, in the form of much higher prices for all goods and services. In the words of one community organizer, prices will “necessarily skyrocket”. On everything.
Those in charge of the developed nations are salivating at the prospect of every government’s wet dream from time immemorial: taxing the air we breathe! And the underdeveloped countries are being shamelessly bribed outright for their votes — with money confiscated from already hard-bitten taxpayers.
The whole ‘catastrophic AGW’ narrative has become a giant hoax. A scam. It may have started with good intentions and a concern that maybe Arrhenius was right. But it has morphed into a corrupt racket. And we are the marks.
The last thing our economy needs is more taxes. We already have too much to pay for:
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2525/9035/original.jpg

Reply to  dbstealey
September 15, 2015 5:09 pm

Looks like a hockey stick, where have I seen that before?

Reply to  John piccirilli
September 16, 2015 3:44 pm

😎
We’re being pucked!

lee
Reply to  dbstealey
September 15, 2015 7:13 pm

Don’t forget that central tenet of AGW – the tropical tropospheric hotspot. Still lost and alone, somewhere. Perhaps in the Southern Ocean on vacation.

Lady Gaiagaia
Reply to  lee
September 15, 2015 7:17 pm

It goes on vacation there in the Southern Hemisphere Winter?
A masochistic glutton for punishment is the TTSH.

Tony B (another one)
September 15, 2015 1:28 pm

They must be getting desperate if they have dispensed with any form of under the radar, subterfuge, and publish this so brazenly?
Or maybe just breathtakingly arrogant. And desperate.

September 15, 2015 2:02 pm

The Arch Propagandist Joseph Goebbels would be proud!!

Goldrider
Reply to  Rudolph Hucker
September 15, 2015 7:49 pm

“Muahhhhhaaahhaaaahhaaa!!!” (Useful idiots bleat in unison!)

Hivemind
September 15, 2015 3:21 pm

“to frame it not merely as an environmental issue but also as an issue of social justice and poverty alleviation”
Poverty alleviation: ie, transferring money from the taxpaying suckers to the ‘journalists’? Could they be any more blatant in their outrageous socialist agenda?

Stuart Jones
September 15, 2015 3:34 pm

“Journalist code of ethics” I laughed till I threw up at that one.

pat
September 15, 2015 3:59 pm

“UN and Oxfam”?
Wikipedia: Oxfam
Oxfam was originally founded at 17 Broad Street in Oxford, Oxfordshire, in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of Quakers, social activists, and Oxford academics…
UN and Oxfam today are practically interchangeable:
UK Oxfam: Oxfam’s CEO, Directors and Trustees
Oxfam’s Leadership Team
Mark Goldring, CEO
Mark has decades of experience … in the field for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)…
Francoise Vanni, Campaigns, Policy and Influencing Director
Other key development roles include Chief of Communications for UNICEF, Mexico…
Tim Hunter, Fundraising Director
Prior to joining Oxfam, he was International Fundraising Director for UNICEF, based in Geneva, for 5 years. During this period UNICEF’s private sector income grew strongly to $1.5 billion. He led a global fundraising team operating in more than 50 countries and working with flagship corporate partners…
Jack Lundie, Communications Director
Before Save the Children, he worked at the BBC in a variety of roles, including strategic creative development for London 2012, Deputy Editor of Blue Peter and as innovation lead for BBC Sport. Prior to this, he led Comic Relief’s interactive team through two Red Nose Days and a Sport Relief…
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/our-trustees
Oxfam International:
Winnie Byanyima is Executive Director of Oxfam International…
She served … as Director of Gender and Development at the United Nations Development Program. She co-founded the 60-member Global Gender and Climate Alliance and chaired a UN task force on gender aspects of the Millennium Development Goals, and on climate change…
https://www.oxfam.org/en/winnie-byanyima-oxfam-international-executive-director
no doubt many more UN/Oxfam connections can be dug up at Oxfam’s various International websites.

steve grant
September 15, 2015 4:07 pm

Biggest scam ever foisted upon the public.

gnomish
September 15, 2015 4:40 pm

and gore’s and obama’s nobel peace prizes?
were they anything but a bribe to deliver america’s wealth to the belgian overlords?

High Treason
September 15, 2015 5:12 pm

A twisted system of lies is required to perpetuate the obvious perilous base of all the climate narrative. The base notion that a 15% change in the atmospheric concentration of a minor trace gas from .035% to .04% is the chief driver of planetary temperatures/ climate/ weather/ ocean chemistry or whatever is patently absurd. It held together entirely by repetition and more lies. “Make the lie big, make it simple, repeat it frequently and people will come to believe it”- Joseph Goebbels. It is all propaganda and brainwashing to conceal a truly sinister outcome that no sane person would ever sign on for. The scam is all about the destruction of our civilization.

Patrick
September 15, 2015 7:41 pm

Ah so that’s what she is up to now. Ruined New Zealand when she was PM, and then shot off to the UN when she lost her last election. So she landed herself with a cushy job at the UN spouting propaganda along with her fake husband. The UN can keep you Helen. You were mostly responsible for making NZer’s who live and work in Australia second class, temporary, residents.

AB
Reply to  Patrick
September 15, 2015 8:53 pm

100% correct. Also bought the AGW garbage hook line and sinker. We don’t want her back.

JohnKnight
September 15, 2015 8:07 pm

It is inconceivable to me that none of the UN and Gov. officials (or “presstitutes”) promoting “carbon taxes” don’t know that it will cause a significant rise in the price of food and other basic necessities. . which means certain death for millions of people who can barely keep themselves and their families alive now (and millions taking their place on the brink of starvation). The more “successful” the drive for carbon taxes, the greater that “guaranteed” carnage will be (quite possibly killing tens or even hundreds of millions of human beings) . .
I believe they are (by and large) well aware of this consequence . . which it to say I believe you CAGW “deniers” here and everywhere else are perfectly justified in resisting what I see as a grotesque charade, and I thank you.

Reply to  JohnKnight
September 16, 2015 4:53 am

I’m sure there will be plenty of Paris-ite press-titutes around.

indefatigablefrog
September 15, 2015 8:34 pm

Well I noticed long ago, that an “eco-warrior” is seemingly in general a relatively rich person from a relatively rich country who would be willing to burn vast quantities of fossil fuel to fly half way around the world (maybe 150 gallons of kerosene per passenger per ten hours of flight) to a location where this individual would use attention-seeking tactics to resist the construction of a hydroelectric power scheme.
Usually such a scheme is intended to provide cheap renewable energy to poor people in a poor country.
Criticisms of such projects are always numerous and mostly spurious.
Here is a typical gem from an intellectually defective article in our favourite leftist rag – the Grauniad:
“An interesting ecotourism industry has been developing in the area lately, which would be damaged by the dams.”
O.M.G. forgive me for not giving the slightest shit about the effects of a hydroelectric dam on the activities of kerosene guzzling eco-tourists, who visit to have an eco-holiday in a sparsely populated region of Patagonia.
These morons seem to be so blinded by ego-aggrandizement and pathological self-deceit that they cannot see what is plainly obvious to all of the rest of us:
That they are committed to actively resisting access to cheap renewable energy for the poor.
Whilst they themselves are rich and are guzzling up far more than their fair share of the world’s fossil fuel reserves.
Here is the link to the full, obscene, stupid and misguided article that I quoted above. Read and weep:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/12/chile-hydroelectric-patagonian-destruction

Billy Liar
Reply to  indefatigablefrog
September 16, 2015 12:31 pm

Isn’t ‘eco-tourism’ an oxymoron?

AlexS
September 15, 2015 8:36 pm

If the author include the career threats against journalists that don’t tow the line the corruption is much bigger than this.

Louis Hunt
September 15, 2015 9:42 pm

“The contest is a fantastic opportunity to create awareness of the harmful impacts of climate change on communities…”
If the impacts of climate change are so harmful, why wouldn’t communities already be aware of them? Why the need to “create awareness”? Are the harmful effects of climate change so tiny and subtle that you need to have the microaggressions of the climate pointed out to you by young, inexperienced, but highly indoctrinated journalists to avoid missing them completely?

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  Louis Hunt
September 16, 2015 1:37 am

The genius gambit here, is that we must instruct all communities, that whilst they are not directly seeing the “harmful impacts” then they are quite seriously impacting upon another community elsewhere.
So, these “harmful effects” are real – BUT – they are always somewhere else.
Actually, they move their attention about from one subject to another, because each year offers up a new opportunity to select from a range of weather events and draw alarming conclusions.
2005 was a good year for concern about Atlantic Hurricanes striking the U.S. coastline. Clear evidence that climate change threatened to hurl hurricane and tornadoes at the U.S.
2004 and 2011 were good years for tsumanis, clear evidence for climate change induced tsunamis.
2001 was a good year for collapsing skyscrapers, clear evidence for climate change caused skyscraper collapse.
2014 was a good year for the obliteration of Malaysian Airlines aircraft, clear evidence of the capacity of climate change to destroy planes.
Etc,
Luckily for the “extreme event” spotters – something is always going on somewhere.
Since the world is very large and lots of stuff happens every day.
Some of that stuff will be inevitably, not very nice.

dp
September 15, 2015 10:48 pm

There is no history of journalistic impartiality so why is this news? The yellow press is alive and well and always has been. That bullshit claim of being the forth estate is just that. Is anyone surprised? Really?

indefatigablefrog
September 16, 2015 1:23 am

Actually, I can now speak from experience and tell the world that journalists are having far more of an effect upon the developing events than merely distorting public perceptions of weather related disasters.
I live very close to the region of the Somerset Levels which recently suffered from the effects of catastrophic flooding.
I have looked back on the internet and found that prior to the flooding the BBC was willing to report the views of certain people who were stating their concerns that – since the required maintenance of the main man-made banked drainage channels had been suspended in the early 1990’s – then we would soon face a catastrophic situation in which one winter of heavy rain would produce a flow that exceeded the capacity of the compromised system – and thereby caused severe flooding.
This event was predicted quite specifically, in advance. And I will provide a link to such an article below.
HOWEVER – when precisely that event took place it was immediately jumped upon by the usual suspects as evidence of climate change induced catastrophe.
By painting the event as a climate change/extreme weather induced problem – it was then possible to propose that the the solution to the problems on the Levels was clearly that we must spend hundreds of BILLIONS of extra cash on subsidies for off-shore wind generators in the North Sea.
You see, the logic is clear. In summary:
Problem: Flooding in Somerset Levels.
Solution: £billions of spending in subsidies for off-shore wind turbines.
Local drainage experts are seemingly dumb-struck, Because the real solution would be the reinstatement of regular annual maintenance work costing only a few million.
Actually, I do personally know two individuals who sit on the Brue Drainage Board, one an engineer and one a farmer. Whilst these two individuals are clear that reasonable strategies are not being adopted and in many cases it does not seem possible to reasonably discuss them they cannot understand why they constantly meet with a wall of imbecility.
So they have explained to me their baffling inability to communicate the need for maintenance of the entire man-made drainage system.
And I have been able to explain to them, to some extent – the vast system of skewed interests and incentives that have lead to the abandonment of reason, good judgement and moral behaviour.
What is clear, is that whilst prior to the disaster it was possible for a journalist to explain that without the immediate implementation of a multi-million pound maintenance program – disaster would be soon coming – NOW, that this disaster has occurred then all journalists (except North and Booker), are toeing the line and only making reference to the disaster as the result of climate weirding.
Of course, by denying that the event may have had primarily a non-climate change induced cause (who are the real deniers?) then journalists are actually assisting in ensuring that the problem is neither understood nor solved. And ensuring that it continues or worsens in the future.
AND – therefore, journalists have now become a CAUSE of the catastrophes that they are paid to report on.
I’m sure that a similar process is occurring elsewhere in the world.
Let us pity the poor, since they are at the mercy of imbecilic journalists, concerned celebrities and scientifically illiterate “experts”.
Oh, and let us not forget the occasional rock-star or software billionaire.
When the world’s poor have friends like these rushing to their aid – then natural catastrophe is the last thing that they need to worry about!!!
Here is the BBC talking quite specifically about the oncoming catastrophe BEFORE the catastrophe of 2013/14:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-24143795

Charlie
September 16, 2015 5:33 am

I was wondering who coined the term “climate denier?” They should be applauded for single handily postponing this irritating ruse for years. You cannot have a conversation with environmentslists or greens without them using term ad nauseum. To be skeptical of climate chane is to be a skeptic of thier God. They are right as in thier is no debate. There is no debate with radical fundamentalists of any religion.

Reply to  Charlie
September 16, 2015 6:58 am

‘There is no debate with radical fundamentalists of any religion.’
Oh yes there is: Here is the 97% debating the fundamentalist 3%: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+oliver+climate+change&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=7DB2C1D6488D1CC0A16E7DB2C1D6488D1CC0A16E

Ofay Cat
September 16, 2015 7:24 am

I give zero money to charity. I have family members and friend who are sometimes in need. That is where my charity money goes ….. charity begins and ends at home. Anything else is guilt money.