From the “cloak and dagger journalism for hire” department comes this today from EnergyInDepth and Katie Brown, PhD
In a stunning admission, Lee Wasserman, Director of the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), today openly admitted that the Rockefellers are pouring millions of dollars into “media” organizations like InsideClimate News (ICN) and projects at Columbia University School of Journalism with a specific mission and outcome in mind.
In an interview with Reuters responding to questions about the RFF climate agenda and mission, Wasserman flatly states:
“No specific company was targeted in our push to drive better public understanding and better climate policy…..We supported public interest journalism to better understand how the fossil fuel industry was dealing with the reality of climate science internally and publicly,” Wasserman said. (emphasis added)
Since the Columbia School of Journalism began partnering with RFF, the school has insisted that the Rockefeller foundations – both RFF and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation (RBF) – had nothing to do with the content of the series making erroneous claims about ExxonMobil. Here’s what the Columbia School of Journalism and ICN have been saying over the past few months:
- Dean of the Graduate School at Columbia School of Journalism Steve Coll: “The fact is that this reporting was not subject to any influence or control by the funders.”
- ICN: “Donors who support our award-winning environmental journalism do not have access to our editorial process or decision-making.”
- Columbia School of Journalism Review: “Both the Times and Coll have reiterated that the project’s funders had a hands-off relationship with its journalism.”
- Columbia Energy and Environment Fellowship Project website: “The Energy & Environment Fellowship Project is an intensive, full-time investigative reporting opportunity for four recent graduates of Columbia Journalism School. The fellows work independently and in teams to rigorously examine issues related to the environment and energy resources on an international level.”
Energy In Depth has worked to expose exactly this kind of shady “journalism” for many years, uncovering clear conflicts of interest when the mainstream media would not. In fact, EID was one of the first to expose the fact that RBF and RFF had funded the Columbia School of Journalism hit pieces, as that information initially wasn’t disclosed.
EID also called attention to the fact that these very same foundations also funded anti-ExxonMobil series published by ICN, which came out within days of the LA Times piece – and as the National Review pointed out after all this came to light, “The little that is known about InsideClimate News raises questions about conflicts of interest as well as about the publication’s ability, and proclivity, to report fairly and without bias.”
Only about a month later the RBF funded a study at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies suggesting that “corporate funding” to more than 160 so-called “climate counter movement” institutions was largely responsible for skepticism about climate science.
When the Columbia series originally appeared in the LA Times, it noted that the reporters were from the Columbia School of Journalism, but the disclosure of RBF and RFF funding was nowhere to be found.
Full story here:
http://energyindepth.org/national/rockefellers-admit-paying-for-exxonknew-media-coverage/
And with all that million$ of money, some climate haters (Miriam you know who you are) have a cow when I asked for donations to send me to AGU15.
Maybe I’ll ask again, just to tick them off. Hmm. OK.
Please consider support of WUWT’s mission with a donation here
“We supported public interest journalism”
What exactly does this mean?
Confirmation bias needs their help.
In a word “propaganda”
Sounds like W.E. needs to go ask them for a job as a ”climyt analist” interpreting the Sighnts, so everyone who doubted can finally see how atmospheric chemistry is really made out of magic!.” Ya’LL.
Journalism that told the public what they should be interested in?
Journalism that told the public what they should conclude about what “we” want them to be interested in?
“Public interest journalism” that we bought for a price?
It means we don’t use descriptive words like mohammedan terrorists. Disgruntled refugees is more appropriate, or perhaps racist tea party activists.
So long as we curtsy in synchronism with the rest of the wave it is ok.
g
Now I get it, GE! Descriptive words like WMD’s and SUV’s that run over people and America’s economic recovery and 5% unemployment and Palestinian terrorists and predicted pandemics and E-bola boogeymen in green T-shirts and squadrons of Zika-mosquitoes zipping across the planet wreaking havoc and Oz’s D. C. “government” offering to buy a TV converter for anyone who couldn’t afford a new idiot box to hear The Truth about important events like the Sandy Hoax “shootings” and “terrorist” attacks in Paris and Belgium (who did they say funded and equipped ISIS?) and a wild kangaroo hopping down the street in an Australian city (can you imagine) and NO. . .MORE. . . ORCA . . .WHALE shows and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it best “. . . it’s like spittle in your eye.”
Pimp media is key to century-long Oz deceptions. They began in the 1930’s. Much simpler then. People trusted the double handful of papers they called together and said, “. . . glad the distinguished publishers of America could join us for dinner tonight. The reason we’ve called you together is that we’re going to ask you to help us build a great nation . . . ” And what was at stake for the publishers were plenty of white envelope ads like the ones beneath their dinner plates to offset expenses for their trip.
One Alan Cole on the Powerline Blog wrote,
To which we should add:
There is no public interest journalism. There is only journalism.
/Mr Lynn
It means they support any journalism that they agree with.
It means that journalism has the right to determine what is best for the public and launch campaigns based on that. If a politician/person/company disagrees with certain dogmas being promoted by government, journalism jumps in and “in the public interest” draws attention to that politician/person/company by running shaming articles or exposes.
Tell me something new.
The Rockefellers fund just about every AGW/Agenda 21 “charity”in the world.
I even wrote a blog about that at http://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2015/08/15/the-rockefellers-who-they-fund-from-their-web-site/
The Rockefellers do not have a good history with the strategy of their “investments” as attested by their enthusiasm for Hitler’s eugenics project. Check this out: Rockefellers Funded German Eugenics in 1920’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL8UOD1gVFE
Check the video at 54 mins and 12 secs.
Or try Googling Rockefeller Eugenics
My Agenda 21 leaning city receives substantial cash after joining the Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities program.
No one seems to be asking what the Rockefeller’s will demand at the end of the day for their “investment”
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
One branch of the Rockefeller family trashing another branch of the Rockefeller family. Why can’t they just be rude to each other at weddings and funerals, like other families?
Based on my experience in the research group of a major oil company as well as graduate school, I have a lot more confidence in ExxonMobil’s science than just about anything from the academy.
Your demands a Ghostbuster clip, but my internet skills are lacking.
‘We supported …. the reality of climate science.’ Enough said.
For real.
“We funded the project to put the fox, weasel and skunk in the hen house but we didn’t tell them to kill ANY chickens”
Love it!! +100
The one that pays the piper calls the tune!
Mmmm. Sometimes, perhaps. Not always, though.
Never forget that BEST was funded by the Koch brothers. And sometimes the funders simply look for and latch onto the outlets that agree with them in the first place, which is hardly to be unexpected. (After all, if you were them, who would you fund? Seems to me like they chose well.)
At any rate, the science suffering most from the analysis side of it, not the empirical side. And that is not nearly as dependent on funding, all it requires is elbow grease.
Foundation of one of the Koch’s gave $150k. That’s well under 10% of their funding.
http://berkeleyearth.org/funders/
I wish I had 150k in funding from Greenpeace. The source wouldn’t influence my results.
Müller of BEST only pretended to be independent. His true colors were revealed when he refused to use satellite temperature data for his Magnum Opus and incorporated the falsified ground-based data as a basis for his temperature curve. These ground-based data exaggerate warming from the seventies on and fraudulently pretend vthat there was warning in the eighties and nineties when actually there was a hiatus. It lasted from 1979 to 1997 and is shown as figure v15 in my book that came out in 2010. I kept referring to this but was completely ignored by the powers that be in control of official temperature records. They have gotten away with that fraudulent temperature curve since the nineties, a good twenty years by now..
Thems that has the gold makes the rools !
g
That’s getting less and less true. Look at what we have done with no funding at all. We have done very much with very little.
We are no longer shut out of the journals. And that’s where the real fight is. The journals are the dog. the politics is just a brightly colored tail. Ultimately, the tail will go where the dog goes. (After a usually painful interval.)
Know your battlefield.
Dr Jones,
With much respect for your efforts, the battle, at least in the US, appears to me to be in our grade schools for the hearts and minds of our children and future leaders and scientists. They are being indoctrinated/brainwashed in a manner no different than kids in North Korea are brainwashed. This is a battle that is hardly even being considered as far as I can tell. And, not fighting it will be our doom, regardless of getting a few articles published in journals, in my humble opinion.
“Sow the wind, reap a storm.”
Or if you prefer
“When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most harmless of objects become deadly projectiles.”
The “journalists” may want to consider what will happen to them when the whole climate change movement comes crashing down around their ears,and people start asking hard questions about ethics and conflicts of interest.
They’ll profit from the resulting headlines?
News is a product folks like it not. That’s how it is.
The neck of people talking about funding in science and thinking that opposes the church of climate change.
It was a common communist ploy to counter accusations with accusations of the same thing.
Apart from all of the dryer wetter flip flopping on science, they now talk of weather after a decade of saying weather is irrelevant, and accuse sceptics of lavish funding.
So surreal.
Total big oil corp profits in total were about $90bn in 2014 and over 4 times that was spent on climate change.
Furthermore, the big banks have large shares in the Oil companies, this information is usually withheld. Banks want cap and trade as it is not only profitable, but so open to fr4ud, candyland
Indeed. And global warmers also made surethey got their retaliation in first. To paraphrase a million jokes: They didn’t arrive late for a “climate” war. They turned up early.
There has to be at least a few laws broken there !!
REquired reading: The New Leviathans”. That ain’t the only foundation to have been co-opted by the progressives….
If I had Rockefeller money, there’s no telling…………….
“If I had Rockefeller money, there’s no telling…………….”
Well, you could cross ramen noodles off the grocery list, for one, u.k.(us).
I don’t know how this is news?
The Rockefellers have been heavily invested in Big Green for quite some time now. However it seems as though they’ve gone back to selling snake oil aka renewables.
Bill doesn’t miss an opportunity to spread the gloom even when he drops in to top-up the bus.
http://www.yecaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/greenbus2.jpg
that’s right down the road from me …
All those little bumps on the the bus must be Solydra solar arrays. That’s why it’s parked under the street light. It needs a recharge.
(Must have been a cloudy day.)
let’s not forget CRED at revered Columbia inventing the spin (of course there is nothing wrong with that //)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/01/climate-communications-strategic-use-of-climate-uncertainty-in-media-education-and-politics/
and there’s no politics in Big Oil (or big Hillary)
http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-calls-for-exxon-probe-after-company-cuts-off-foundation-funding/
I thought Columbia announced years ago that they were closing their School of Journalism. It was shocking on one hand because of the prestige, but it made perfect sense on the other because media had changed so drastically and rapidly with the internet and technology. The skills one needed to become a journalist were offered in other departments. It was redundant yet obsolete.
I guess I now know why it’s still open.
Publicly funded political campaigns are as malevolent as a state funded church, and for basically the same reasons. Someone gets to vet the candidates worthy of funding, and someone gets to set the rules for what is proper campaigning. One guess who that omipotent authority will be.
I do not want any of my money going to fund those reprobate motherless bastards on the other side, and I am sure they have an equal interest in funding mine.
The largest problem in political funding of science is the sort of thing Stalin did with Lysenko, and Obama is doing with CAGW–funding only those who are politically useful and fit their prejudices.
It’s the Rockefeller foundation, among others, that’s been funding the treehugger eco terrorist outfits for hire, and the Rochefeller foundation that’s been funding corrupt politicians election campaigns in Canada.
The Rockefellers also funded (bribed) native bands in British.Columbia ($8 million) to oppose the Trans-mountain and Northern Gateway (expansion) pipelines. Some of these bands giving testimony at the two year long hearing lived on reserves a 100 kilometres or more from the route of the proposed pipelines. I contrast the length of this hearing with those for proposed wind farms in Ontario. Just joking, there are no hearings or any public or local government input asked for by the Liberal provincial government. Nor is there any environmental assessment when it comes to windmills in Ontario thanks to the Green Energy Act. Legislation a Fascist would be proud of enacting. You can hardly erect a doghouse in Ontario without having an environmental assessment done.
That’s all true. It’s unfortunate that we had an appeaser, crawling coward, running the federal government, that knew what was going on and sat back and let it all happen. Until it finally took out him and his government.
The Rockefeller’s ARE big oil…….in the break up of Standard Oil the Rockefeller’s owned 26% of the 30 or so companies that emerged thereafter and there is no indication that they have ever sold any shares at all except for a recent publicity stunt where the Rockefeller’s Brother Fund sold $100 million or so in shares and claimed to be divesting from oil……there holdings in oil have to be in the 100’s of billions possibly even trillions although you would be hard pressed to find they own any shares at all due to the labyrinth of foundations and trusts and the like they are hidden in. So the question is why would big oil itself be supporting AGW and green tech and the like? The reason is that because it would be win win for them as they also own a huge chunk of investment banking and any carbon tax/ carbon trading scheme would flow through those companies and be leveraged 20 30 50 times in the derivatives markets and the skim from these trading vehicles would be enormous.
They would still be making money and oil and any losses there would be more than offset by the gains in their financial company holdings.
Who’s side are they on? Can’t tell from this article.
It is not a conflict of interest for one nonprofit foundation to fund another nonprofit organization whose mission it supports.
So you,re saying it is the Mission of the Columbia School of Journalism to be an advocate of liberal environmental causes? I didn’t know they were finally admitting that.
Not surprising of course given the University became an enclave for Marxists who fled Germany.
“…..Frankfurt University’s Institute for Marxism — renamed the Institute for Social Research and informally called the Frankfurt School — fled Nazi Germany, took up temporary residence at Columbia University in 1933, and then, during World War II, began using Gramsci-derived “critical theory” to “deconstruct” American society. ”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/cultural_marxism_in_education_1.html#ixzz43vcaAIsw
It’s perfectly fine for such advocacy. What’s wrong here is that the School of Journalism is guilty of false advertising in its name. But renaming it self accurately, say MiniTruth, is likely not helpful to its cause.
Here is some info on the Rockeflleer Brothers
http://www.undueinfluence.com/otero_mesa.htm
Follow the money
You would be hard pressed trying to follow their money…………JD Rockefeller owned 26% of the 30 companies that emerged from the break up of Standard Oil with a theoretical value today in the many 100’s of billions, possibly even trillions of dollars yet you would be hard pressed to find a single share with their names on it………there is no indication they ever sold any and they have never ever needed to sell any…….dividend income alone on thier oil holdings is likely in the billions of dollars per year. Congress once investigated the Rockefeller’s business holdings when Nelson A Rockefeller was selected as vice president after Nixon resigned and they came up with virtually nothing, that is the control these people have on both the financial system and government.
This would be a good time to see the list of orgs targeted by IRS too.
“RBF funded a study at …. suggesting that “corporate funding” to more than 160 so-called “climate counter movement” institutions was largely responsible for skepticism about climate science.”
The implied thinking is that only the press and media delivers information and if they have captured it exclusively then you can only think what they want you to. Flabbergasting!
Journalists have five traits.
Anti-science
Anti-nuke
Anti-military
Anti-police
Anti-American
I am sure the newsroom at the NY Times, NPR (National Pravda Radio), or the Columbia School Journalism will disagree.
anti-capitalism
Speaking of which, Obama declared yesterday that there is practically no difference between capitalism and communism.
This would be the same chap chillin’ at a baseball game in Havana while people were dying in Brussels?
Every global warmonger on the planet should be held to account for their continual use of petroleum products in spite of “knowing of the damage they are causing the environment”. Fricking hypocrites. Donation sent.
Tell me something new.
The Rockefellers fund just about every AGW/Agenda 21 “charity”in the world.
I even wrote a blog about that at http://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2015/08/15/the-rockefellers-who-they-fund-from-their-web-site/
The Rockefellers do not have a good history with the strategy of their “investments” as attested by their enthusiasm for Hitler’s eugenics project. Check this out: Rockefellers Funded German Eugenics in 1920’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL8UOD1gVFE
Check the video at 54 mins and 12 secs.
Or try Googling Rockefeller Eugenics
My Agenda 21 leaning city receives substantial cash after joining the Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities program.
No one seems to be asking what the Rockefeller’s will demand at the end of the day for their “investment”
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
I’d like to help fund some journalism projects. Specifically, I’d like to fund some ambush journalism catching warmists at the fuel pump filling up, and explain why it’s OK for them but not for the rest of us. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to catch weepy Bill in the act?
“Please consider support of WUWT’s mission with a donation here” … http://www.surfacestations.org/donate.htm
Come on ExxonMobil … cough it up!
“Dean of the Graduate School at Columbia School of Journalism Steve Coll: ‘The fact is that this reporting was not subject to any influence or control by the funders’.”
If, as is regularly charged, money for skeptics corrupts those skeptic’s and biases their work toward false conclusions, how is it that there is no connection between funding sources, the purity of true believers and biases in their work? How can anyone claim that funders have no influence or control over an endeavor when continued (future) funding hinges on an endeavor pleasing to the funding source?
“You’re up, Twinkletoes! If we really hate your dance, you can expect a really big tip and an invitation to come back and do it again!”
Bingo! Especially the funder is the government.
Leftists consider themselves to be incorruptible. Which is why they are allowed to do things that is forbidden to everyone else.
Why would EXON be against Renewables? WHY. It does not take a genius to realize that Renewables actually increase the demand for NG and Oil. Even Robert Kennedy knows it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcm1gmPL50s
Flirty fishing in safe space constrains the population by a factor of 3.
They’re waiting on it; a new transcedence of ‘Advent’.
Ment to the link ‘uncertanties in climate change’
Leftists define right and wrong based solely on whether or not they benefit.
When I first saw that sign, I could have sworn that the first line read “This rump”.
“Please consider support of WUWT’s mission”
Done!
Aren’t these the same folks who helped establish our current allopathic medical syndrome too?
Sadly, Exxon now says climate change is real and needs addressed, meaning millions will be left in poverty in third world countries. But what’s a few million poor people when the planet needs saving?
Few people can claim responsibility for America’s rise to greatness more than JDR, The generation of Rockefellers that are making this decision have basically accomplished nothing more than being born into a family that has lived off the success of their ancestors. JDR can lay claim to saving the whales, what can they lay claim to? Spending their great grandfather’s money? How Pathetic, How Ayn Randian, how Lillian and Phillip Reardon (Characters in Atlas Shrugged). If these parasites could have taken the money they were given and developed an alternative energy source that was commercially viable, then they might have a point, but they didn’t. I only hope they take all their money and invest in wind and solar, so they will soon be bankrupt, and recorded in the history books as the greatest fools and their money, right along side George Vanderbuilt.
Well, I expect to see a lot of climate alarmists raising the flag over private money going to push an agenda here. /s
JDR standardized and made Kerosene safe, killing the whale oil industry. Saving the whales, saving human lives and creating countless jobs. He then refined the “waste” petroleum not used for Kerosene, and created gasoline. Gasoline allowed for the internal combustion engine, the automobile and countless jobs and quality of life improvements. The price of oil, kerosene and gasoline collapsed while he was being attacked for being a monopolist. JDR’s fuel allowed us to defeat the Axis in WWII. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because they didn’t have what FDR gave the US. These parasitic 3rd and 4th generation removed trust fund welfare recipients have done nothing for what they have been given, and they smear the person that made everything they have possible. That is what is wrong with progressive liberal politics, they are being driven who are used to living off others, offer no real solutions to anything, and because of their inferiority and insecurities are susceptible to clueless sycophants’ flattery and manipulation.
I think you meant “what JDR gave the US”, not “what FDR gave the US”?