UN 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]
Simple rule…if the chief exec of a charity earns more than me, they get not one penny.
I just said this under “Are the Oceans Becoming More Acidic?”.
It seems apply.
Gunga Din
September 16, 2015 at 3:32 pm
The language of science needs to be precise or nothing precise is communicated. The language of sales only needs to precise enough so as not to be sued for false advertising. The language of politics only needs to precise enough to leave the desired impression.
If the big bad molecule we need to control was Oxygen then we’d be hearing all about “oxidation” of this or that even though Oxygen isn’t the only thing that oxidizes….but it sounds like it must have something to do with it.
“Alkaline”, “alkalinity”, “neutralization”, “acidification”?
The use of “Climate Change” (as in the IPCC) and “Global Warming”?
Are the terms being used to be precise or to sell an idea for political purposes?
Our former PM Tony Abbott, lost out to a long running campaign by the media (mainly the ABC) and the new PM. One of Tony’s best quotes was “Socialism disguised as environmentalism”. That never went down well with the GG’s at the ABC. Unfortunately Tony paid the price.
“Journalists’ codes of ethics prohibit being induced to give favourable coverage…”
I don’t read newspapers or watch the boob tube anymore, but my understanding is the whatever “code” journalists might have these days is very flexible when it comes to pushing the lefty agenda.
Ever since charitable organisations like Oxfam became politicised over the issue of global warming, I ceased making donations to them. I also ceased donating to WWF when it became one of the foremost activist groups in the climate-change business. WWF was primarily concerned with wildlife issues and conservation. No longer.